Francis Hamel and his Oxford Paintings

The dome of the Radcliffe Camera just popping up from behind a tree overhanging Brasenose Lane; Magdalen College tower appearing in the background of the neatly coiffured box that hedges the rose beds at the front of Oxford’s Botanic Garden; Martyr’s Memorial looming over the shoulder of The Randolph Hotel as a steady stream of pedestrians crosses over Beaumont Street. These are some of the 100 or so images that feature in Francis Hamel’s new book ‘The Oxford Paintings, with a miscellany of Poetry and Prose.’ Painted during three intensive periods over 25 years, to those who live in the city they are instantly familiar snapshots, illustrated vignettes that cleverly capture that sense of continued surprise that many of us feel at the sudden sight of a soaring medieval spire over a modern rooftop, or a field of meadow flowers glimpsed through the railings from a bus busy high street. The city is a tease. And Hamel, who trained at Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art and where he now teaches, embraces its flirtations.

Hamel’s paintings are accompanied by black and white sketches; a cat with a feathery tail, a lady holding her umbrella in the rain, a guide with a bunch of tourists, the kind of day-to-day scenarios that he must have encountered when out and about in all weathers with his bike and trailer loaded with paints and canvasses. And sit nicely alongside a lovely selection of prose and poetry chosen by Hamel’s friend Ron Caffrey, a second-hand book seller with whom he once ran a tea shop on the High Street. Both old and new writings about the city, you will even find an entry from The Oxford Sausage. For which I am both honoured and delighted. 

Hamel has created an affectionate love letter to Oxford.

He wears his heart on his sleeve.

And the book is all the better for it.

The Eagle and Child, Hanging Basket

Brasenose Lane

Botanical Garden, Sunlit Doorway

The Chestnut Tree in Lamb and Flag Passage

The Randolph, Winter Evening

The Covered Market

Hawthorn Tree on Port Meadow

St Giles at Dusk

The University Church from Merton Street

High Street Deliveries in the Early Evening

Holywell Street in the Early Morning

Magdalen, Tributary of the Cherwell

‘Francis Hamel, The Oxford Paintings with a miscellany of Poetry and Prose’ is published this week by Clearview Books.

An exhibition of his work is showing at Magdalen College 13 – 16 March.

And then at the John Martin Gallery in London 27 March – 26 April