Elaine Hamilton
Elaine Hamilton-O'Neal (born October 13, 1920 in Paradise, Maryland; died March 15, 2010 in Woodstock, Maryland) was a notable abstract artist and mountain climber. She was the wife of Hayes Aircraft Corporation engineer and executive Bill O'Neal.
Elaine was the daughter of Robert Bruce and Lee (née Wood) Hamilton and was raised at "Emerald Hill", a family estate in Daniels, along the Patapsco River, just north of Ellicott City. During the summers, the family decamped to the nearby Patapsco Valley State Park, sleeping on straw beds under canvas shelters and hiking to Orange Grove for weekly supplies.
Hamilton met Bill O'Neal, an engineer for the Glenn L. Martin Company, at a dinner at the Baltimore Country Club in 1942. They undertook to marry with the expectation that they would not produce children and would each pursue their individual lives and careers to the fullest, even spending most of their time apart. She graduated from the Maryland Institute in 1945 and then spent two years studying at the Art Students League in New York City with Robert Brackman. In 1949 she enrolled at the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City, where she was mentored by Diego Rivera. She was commissioned to paint a large-scale mural at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende. She was honored with a solo exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1951.
In 1952, after O'Neal took a job at Hayes in Birmingham, the couple purchased the "Old Mill" on Shades Creek in the Mountain Brook Estates section of Mountain Brook. That same year, Hamilton attended the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy on a Fulbright Scholarship. She extended her stay to an 8-year residency, with exhibitions in Rome and Milan, and at the Venice Biennale.
In the early 1960s, Hamilton moved to Paris while O'Neal stayed in Mountain Brook. She also began making annual visits to the Himalayan mountains, "to see where the earth and the sky touched." She was hosted by the ruling Namgyal family in Sikkim and began to practice Buddhism.
She purchased a French chateau in 1971. Hamilton hosted dinners and parties at the mill when she was in Birmingham, and threw elaborate gatherings for her husband when he and his friends visited France.