Thomas (1829) Hill Sold at Auction Prices

Landscape painter, Naval painter, Genre Painter, Portrait painter, Still life painter, b. 1829 - d. 1908

(b England, 1829; d California, 1908) American Painter. At the age of fifteen, Thomas Hill emigrated from England to the United States where he gained his early academic training at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, studying under Peter Rothermel. Traveling primarily through the East, Hill spent time painting the White Mountains in New Hampshire with leading Hudson River School artists such as Asher B. Durand and George Inness.* Making a name for himself as an accomplished landscape and portrait painter on the East coast, Hill was stricken with tuberculosis and was forced to relocate to California, where he settled in San Francisco in 1861. Hill was among the first painters to arrive in California with the purpose of depicting the majesty and beauty of the California landscape. Beginning in the 1860s, the artist executed canvases that evoked the pristine qualities of the great western expanse, specifically the dramatic topography of Yosemite. Inspired by the dramatic landscape of California, he opened a studio in Yosemite some years later in 1883 where he found financial success selling his work to tourists.** Throughout his long career, Hill sought out mountain subjects, not merely in California, but in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, and Yellowstone. In 1886 Thomas Hill moved just miles from Yosemite, and remained there for the remainder of his life. (Credit: *Christie’s, New York, Fine American Paintings, March 5, 2009, Lot 94; *Heritage Auction Galleries, Dallas, Texas, January Signature Art of the American West, January 24, 2009, Lot 67012;