Thomas Hill (1829-1908)

The following essay is from the 1982 publication Dallas Collects American Paintings: Colonial to Early Modern.

Born in Birmingham, England, Hill experimented with oil painting as a youth before emigrating with his family to join his tailor father in America in 1844. The reunited family settled in Taunton, Massachusetts, where Hill worked as a carriage painter and furniture decorator before moving to Boston. In 1853 he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and for several years painted frequently in the White Mountains with a group of artists including Benjamin Chapney, Asher Durand, George Inness, Albert Bierstadt, and Virgil Williams. Because of poor health, Hill traveled overland with his family to San Francisco in 1861 in search of a warmer climate. He opened a portrait business and in 1859 and 1861 made his first journeys to Yosemite. In the early 60s he exhibited landscapes and portraits in San Francisco and at the National Academy of Design, and in 1866 he studied for six months with Paul Meyerheim in Paris, who encouraged him to specialize in landscape. Returning to America in 1868 he established himself first in Boston and then again in San Francisco, helping to organize the San Francisco Art Association. Through the critical and popular acclaim accorded several large paintings of Yosemite, he became known as "the recognized authority in Yosemite and Sierra painting." Another popular subject was his Driving of the Last Spike (1881), commemorating the completion of the Union-Pacific Railroad. Hill won numerous medals and commanded high prices, although toward the end of his life his reputation began to fade and a series of strokes seriously limited his activity. His last three decades he spent mostly in the Yosemite area.

Steven A. Nash, Dallas Collects American Paintings: Colonial to Early Modern, September 26- November 14, 1982, (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts), 75.

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