Juan Hamilton, Protégé and Beneficiary of Georgia O’Keeffe, Died at 79

Juan Hamilton, an artist, caretaker, and protégé of renowned painter Georgia O’Keeffe and the sole beneficiary of her will, died in his Santa Fe, New Mexico home on February 20 at 79 years old.

He died from complications related to a subdural hematoma, which occurred several years ago, according to his wife Anna Marie Hamilton.

Born John Bruce Hamilton on December 22, 1945, in Dallas, Texas, he grew up in Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela, the child of parents Alan and Claire (Kitzmiller) Hamilton, who served as Presbyterian missionaries. During this time, he adopted the name Juan and began learning how to work with clay from local potters.

Hamilton lived between Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Glen Rock, New Jersey in high school, and earned a bachelor’s degree in studio art from Hastings College in Nebraska, and later studied sculpture at Claremont Graduate University in California.

At 27, Hamilton was a divorced potter and handyman at the sprawling Ghost Ranch property, owned by the Presbyterian Church, where 85-year-old O’Keeffe resided. After knocking on the door and asking for odd jobs, she had him pack a shipping crate—and thus began a decade-long, scandalous relationship.

While the nature of their relationship to one another has been debated and ultimately remains unclear, as detailed in the New York Times, Hamilton took care of the aging artist in her final years. In exchange for his devotion, he received her $90 million estate (just under $40 million of O’Keeffe’s artwork and approximately $50 million in property at that time) and became responsible for overseeing her legacy.

Of course, proximity to O’Keeffe also spurred Hamilton’s art career as a sculptor, with a 1978 show in New York that included attendance by the likes of Andy Warhol and Joni Mitchell, as well as rave reviews by art critics Grace Glueck and John Russell. Though, that level of notoriety later faded as years past.

In 1980, Hamilton married Anna Marie (Prohoroff) Erskine, who had also traveled to Ghost Ranch. Together, they had two sons Albert and Brandon. The family moved into O’Keeffe’s home in Santa Fe as the artist’s health declined until her death at 98 years old in 1986.

“There is no question that it was Hamilton, not relatives, who cared for O’Keeffe in her final years, and that he also gave her life joy and purpose,” the Washington Post reported on the relationship in 1987.

Ultimately, Hamilton agreed to revert to an earlier version of O’Keeffe’s will, granting the family millions of dollars, and leaving him with more than two dozen artworks and much of her property. The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation was established to manage the estate’s affairs.

Though Hamilton held on to the art and ephemera he inherited from O’Keeffe for a number of decades, he ultimately sold more than 100 items from his collection via Sotheby’s, netting $17.2 million, in 2020.