Donald Hamilton Fraser was a British artist best known for his thickly painted landscapes and dexterous drawings of ballet dancers. Influenced by the works of Nicolas de Staël, Fraser laid on pads of bright color with a palette knife rather than a brush. “An artist doesn't really choose what sort of pictures he paints,” he once observed. “He paints what is there inside him. It is a sort of imperative.” Born on July 30, 1929 in London, United Kingdom, he went on to study at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London alongside Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. From the mid-1950s onward, Fraser exhibited in England, the United States, and Europe while teaching at the Royal College of Art. Over the years, his students included David Hockney, Patrick Caufield, and R.B. Kitaj. The artist died on September 2, 2009 in Henley-on-Thames, United Kingdom. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Southampton City Art Gallery, and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, among others.