Frederic C. Hamilton -- the veteran oilman who donated and raised millions for the Denver Art Museum over a span of four decades -- has died.
The co-founder of the Hamilton Brothers Oil Co., an international exploration and production company, and related businesses died Friday, a few days after his 89th birthday, surrounded by his family, the museum said.
In the city's most prominent monument to Hamilton's generosity, the distinctive, sharp-angled wing of the Denver Art Museum that opened 10 years ago this week bears his name in recognition of his efforts to raise funds for the museum, and many works that have hung in the Daniel Libeskind-designed Frederic C. Hamilton Building come from his collection.
“Fred Hamilton was a man of indelible confidence, courage and care for this great state of ours,” Denver Mayor Michael Hancock said. “He will be greatly missed and greatly remembered for his dedicated work to elevate arts and culture in our community. For that, we will forever be grateful to Fred.”
DAM Director Christoph Heinrich said Sunday that the museum staff was "deeply mourning the loss of the museum’s dear friend and longtime leader."
VIDEO: Above, see highlights from the Denver Art Museum's 2013-14 “Nature as Muse: Impressionist Landscapes" exhibition, featuring many paintings owned by Hamilton and later donated to the museum.
Described in a 1997 Denver Business Journal piece as a "lanky, straight talking Denverite," Frederic Hamilton was born in Columbus, Ohio, and migrated to the city more than half a century ago.
The father and grandfather of Hamilton and his brother, Ferris F. Hamilton Jr., were in the natural-gas transmission business. In the 1940s, the two Air Force veterans borrowed $5,000 from their mother to set themselves up as wildcatters.
In 1956, they discovered gas in a Texas oil field, and later pioneered oil production in the North Sea off Great Britain. Their business eventually grew to encompass drilling and production operations in North America and the United Kingdom.
In 1962, the brothers moved Hamilton Brothers Oil Co. to Denver.
Hamilton also was co-founder and chairman of Tejas Gas Corp., which was sold to Shell Oil Co. in 1998.
In 1977, Hamilton joined the board of the Denver Art Museum.
"You want to be a part of the community and help out where you can, so I got involved with the museum as a director,” Hamilton said in a 2014 DBJ interview.
Hamilton told former DBJ Managing Editor L. Wayne Hicks that at the time he joined the DAM's board, the group was “just kind of sleepy and sluggish. ... I was busy all over the world at that point. I didn’t have any time, really, but I went to a meeting one day and they started talking about something we’d agreed to do six or eight months before. And I said, ‘What in the hell are we doing here?’”
So he brought in a new board and led the first endowment campaign to finance the museum’s ambitious plans to build a 146,000-square-foot, $110 million expansion building.
He became the museum's board chairman in 1994 and served in that role for nearly two decades until stepping down in 2013.
For decades, Hamilton had collected paintings, eventually acquiring masterworks of the French Impressionists.
In 2013, the DAM borrowed about 36 of his pieces for the exhibition “Nature as Muse: Impressionist Landscapes from the Frederic C. Hamilton Collection and the Denver Art Museum," part of that year's blockbuster "Passport to Paris" triple exhibition of French art.
Public reaction to the exhibition was so positive that Hamilton agreed to bequeath 22 of his paintings to the museum, a gift valued at about $100 million. It was the largest gift in the history of the museum.
“Collecting these paintings has been a joy for the past four decades and I am happy to know that future generations of visitors to the Denver Art Museum will be able to enjoy them as much as I have,” Hamilton said at the time of the gift. “It is my hope that this gift will make the museum’s collection an even greater resource to everyone who lives in our visits our great city.”
The legacy gift includes works by French titans Paul Cézanne, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley and Auguste Renoir, as well as the first work by Vincent van Gogh to enter the DAM's collection, "Edge of a Wheat Field."
“Fred was a wonderful man, cherished by everyone who knew him," Heinrich said Sunday. "His visionary leadership, his business acumen, his big-hearted kindness and his love of life will never be forgotten. His gifts to our community and to the Denver Art Museum in the form of his astute guidance, bountiful philanthropy and his exceptional art collection will live on forever. His generosity has transformed this museum and our community. Our most heartfelt condolences go out to his family and loved ones.”
Hamilton also served on the board of the Clyfford Still Museum adjacent to the DAM.
Hamilton's philanthropy extended to other fields as well. In 2014 he made a $3 million gift to the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, including $2 million to create the Frederic C. Hamilton Macular Diagnostics Center Fund at the CU Eye Center, where he had been a patient.
He also was a regular benefactor of Graland Country Day School in Denver, where his name appears on various campus landmarks, along with the Denver-area branches of the Boy Scouts of America and the Boys and Girls Clubs.
In later years, Hamilton was chairman of The Hamilton Cos., investing privately in venture capital, private equity, oil and gas, real estate, mortgage lending, securities and acquisitions.
His past corporate directorships included BHP Petroleum, Celanese Corp., First National Bancorporation, Gates Learjet, IntraWest Financial Corp., ITT, International Mining Corp., United States Trust Co., Norwest Corp., Permian Corp., Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken International Corp., United Banks of Colorado and Volvo International.
Hamilton was the DBJ's 2014 Power Book winner in the nonprofits category.
He also received numerous other honors, including a lifetime achievement award for community service from the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation in 2007 and the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts's John Madden Jr. Leadership Award in 2012.
He was inducted into the Colorado Business Hall of Fame in 2010 and was named Citizen of the West by the National Western Stock Show in 2014.
Hamilton is survived by his wife, Jane; four children, Christy H. McGraw, Fred Jr., Crawford and Tom; and 10 grandchildren.
His life and service to the community will be recognized at an event at 5 p.m. Thursday at the Denver Art Museum.
This story draws on reporting by former DBJ staff members L. Wayne Hicks and Bruce Goldberg.
