Perhaps the most prominent landscape painter in California in the late nineteenth century, Thomas Hill is best known for his paintings of the Yosemite Valley. He is also widely admired, however, for his views of the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, the Yellowstone region, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
Born in Birmingham, England in 1829, Hill moved with his family to Taunton, Massachusetts at the age of fifteen. He married in 1851 and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1853. He joined some of America's most significant painters in the White Mountains beginning the following year, and exhibited with them in Boston and elsewhere.
The artist moved to San Francisco in 1861 in search of a milder climate, making his first trip to Yosemite a year later. He went to Paris for more study in 1866-67, again trying New England on his return before moving with his family back to San Francisco in 1871.
Hill's real prominence came in the 1870s. A founding member of the San Francisco Art Association, he became a member of the Bohemian Club, and increasing prices and demand for his paintings made him a wealthy man by 1878. The general economic depression at the end of that decade, however, hit Hill hard, as it did the careers of other artists of the day. He remained highly productive nevertheless, despite seesawing fortunes, until 1896, when he suffered the first of a series of strokes from which he never fully recovered. He died in 1908 in Raymond, California.
Memberships:
Bohemian Club; Atheneum Art Club (Boston); San Francisco Art Association.
Exhibitions:
Maryland Institute, 1853 (medal); Mechanics' Institute Fair (SF), 1864, 1877, 1888 (award), 1894 (bronze medal); California Art Union, 1865 (1st prize); National Academy of Design, 1866; Paris Expo, 1867; NY Palette Club, 1871 (bronze medal); SFAA from 1872; Centennial Expo (Philadelphia), 1876 (medal); Calif. State Fairs, 1879, 1890 (gold medals); PAFA, 1884 (medal); World's Columbian Expo (Chicago), 1893; Ruskin Art Club (LA), 1904. In: Oakland Museum; Society of Calif. Pioneers; Orange Co. (CA) Museum; Crocker Museum (Sacramento); CHS; LACMA; Bancroft Library (UC Berkeley); Stanford Museum; Calif. State Railroad Museum.
