biography of John Henry HILL (1839-1922)

Birth place: West Nyack, NY

Addresses: NYC, Nyak Turnpike, NY

Profession: Landscape painter, aquatintist, and etcher

Studied: his father, John William Hill

Exhibited: NAD, 1856-91; Brooklyn AA, 1866-85; PAFA, 1881; Boston AC, 1882, 1891; AIC, 1899.

Member: ANA, 1859

Work: NYPL; Adirondack Mus., Blue Lake, NY (his diary and a number of works).

Comments: One of the major American still life artists of the second half of the 19th century, he was a follower of Ruskinian philosophy (as were his father, John William Hill, and his grandfather, John Hill). He was also an accomplished landscape painter. In 1867 he published Sketches from Nature." Hill also made a trip West in 1868, creating sketches, watercolors, and gouaches of scenes in Nevada, Utah, and Northern California. The following year he settled in Lake George, NY, and there turned his Western studies into large oil paintings. In 1888 he prepared An Artist's Memorial to honor his father, illustrating it with his own etchings after his father's paintings.

Sources: G&W; Stauffer; Cowdrey, NAD; Rutledge, PA; Fielding; Stokes, Icon., III, 567; Weitenkampf, "John Hill and American Landscapes in Aquatint"; Thieme-Becker; Panorama (Aug.-Sept. 1948), 9, repro. More recently, see Gerdts, Painters of the Humble Truth, 98; Hughes, Artists in California, 256; For Beauty and for Truth, 67 (w/repro.); Falk, Exh. Record Series.