
Richard Hamilton may never have achieved the same level of fame as other key figures of Pop Art, but he was undeniably influential. In fact, he is often hailed as the ‘Father of Pop Art’, and it was he who helped pioneer and define what became one of the most important artistic movements of the 20th century.
Hamilton worked across many different mediums, including painting, collage, photography, and printmaking. His art is most popular in the United Kingdom, and it’s prints which dominate his market, accounting for 75% of all his work sold at auction, where the majority of them fetch between £1,000 and £5,000.
Below is a list of Richard Hamilton’s six most expensive prints sold at auction. If you own a Richard Hamilton print and would like to know more about how much it might be worth, or how to sell it, get in touch with Mark Littler today.
Fashion-Plate (Cosmetic Study IX)
Richard Hamilton’s Fashion-Plate series comprises 12 unique pieces executed in 1969. The series combined lithography, collage, pastels, acrylics, and even cosmetics to create a striking group of works which explore the theatrical and artificial world of fashion photography. The collection of disparate images that make up the works exemplify Hamilton’s belief that “The artist’s job has always been to select and reassemble elements from a chancing, chaotic experience of the world.”
In these pieces, Hamilton was able to merge high art and popular culture to great effect; he even brought in the work of his contemporary, Roy Lichtenstein, with the figure’s right eye being that of Lichtenstein’s famous Crying Girl. This print set a new record for the Hamilton when it was sold by Phillips in December 2013 for £260,000, exceeding its top estimate by £60,000.

Picasso’s Meninas
Las Meninas is an enigmatic 1656 painting by Diego Velázquez; it is often considered one of the most influential paintings in the Western canon, and it has been extensively analysed and studied. Picasso used the painting as the basis for an extended series of reinterpretations of the image in 1957, and in 1973, Richard Hamilton combined the two to create Picasso’s Meninas.
The print came about after Hamilton was invited to contribute to a portfolio in honour of Picasso’s 90th birthday in 1971, Homage à Picasso. The portfolio featured work by 69 prominent artists, including David Hockney, Henry Moore, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol, and Hamilton took the opportunity with his contribution “to run the gamut of Picasso’s ‘periods’ in one plate”.
The result is indeed an extraordinary combination of Picasso’s styles and Velásquez’s original painting, seamlessly drawing together the past and the present in one print; it was sold by Karl & Faber in December 2008 for £164,275, more than seven times its top estimate.

Reaper (h)
This is a very early Richard Hamilton artwork from his Reaper series, which explored the possibilities of etching through the image of a reaping machine. Hamilton later said: “the variations were variations not only of the image, but variations of technique.” He worked on this series whilst attending the Slade School of Art, which he enrolled in after completing his National Service.
The series was exhibited at Gimpel Fils in London in 1950, and Hamilton purportedly marked presumptive edition numbers on the proofs for the benefit of potential buyers. He tended to assume an edition size of 20 or 25, though these were probably never actually printed, meaning the real edition size is likely far smaller, making each impression much rarer. It’s therefore unsurprising that this impression exceeded its top estimate by £53,000 when it was sold by Christie’s in March 2017 for £68,000.

Adonis In Y Fronts
This serigraph in colours dates from 1963, and it was Richard Hamilton’s first ever screenprint. The images in the print come from an extraordinary range of sources: the muscular male torso came from a body-building magazine; the twisted contrapposto pose was inspired by Praxiteles’ 4th century BC sculpture, Hermes and the Infant Dionysus; the earthy tones on the upper chest came from a jumper seen in an advert for Lucky Strike cigarettes; and the title was a pun on ‘Venus in Blue Jeans’, the popular 1962 song recorded by Jimmy Clanton.
This print exemplifies the way Hamilton could draw together different influences from a wide range of places, from ancient art to popular culture, and merge them into a cohesive whole. It was sold by Christie’s in April 2022 for £58,165, more than £16,000 above its top estimate.

Patricia Knight
This print is based on a striking still from Shockproof, a 1949 film noir directed by Douglas Sirk and starring Patricia Knight. Hamilton was instantly captivated by the image, which featured a quasi-Cubist backdrop and femme fatale Patricia Knight staring out past the camera with the body of a man at her feet.
The figure of Patricia Knight proved irresistible to Richard Hamilton, and she appeared in a number of the artist’s works across several decades. This screenprint from 1964 was one of the earliest, and it was sold by Christie’s in May 2013 for £54,825.

Swingeing London III
This print comes from the Swingeing London series which was based on an iconic image of Robert Fraser – Hamilton’s art dealer, who was known as ‘Groovy Bob’ due to his role in London during the ‘Swinging Sixties’ – and the world-famous Rolling Stones rockstar, Mick Jagger. The pair were arrested for drug possession after the notorious Redlands bust of 1967, when a host of officers descended on a gathering at Keith Richards’ Sussex house after an anonymous tip-off, keen to crack down on the recreational drug use and counterculture lifestyle that the Rolling Stones and their entourage embodied.
The image, featuring Jagger and Fraser handcuffed together in a police car, is visually striking, and Hamilton used it as the basis for several works, including this print, which was sold by Sotheby’s in March 2006 for £54,000. Hamilton was associated with many who moved in this circle, and he later said he felt the Swingeing London series (a pun on ‘Swinging London’) ” was the only way I could express this indignation that I felt” over the arrests and subsequent court case.
