66
Thomas Hill
1829-1908
"Crescent Lake - Yosemite Valley"
Oil on canvas
Signed lower right: T. Hill; titled in pencil verso
20" H x 30" W
Additional Details
Notes: Thomas Hill was born in Birmingham, England, and came to the United States as a youth in 1844, following his father to Massachusetts. In 1853, he moved to Philadelphia, where he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. A year later, he visited the White Mountains of New Hampshire, a region associated with painters of the Hudson River School. It was during the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 that he departed for California.
Arriving in San Francisco, Hill worked initially as a commercial artist but soon sought to pursue easel painting. In 1863, he hired the renown painter Samuel Marsden Brookes to give him lessons in oil painting.
By 1865, Thomas Hill was sketching throughout the Sierra Nevada, and by that summer was staying in Yosemite Valley. Hill would go on to build a pine-board studio, where he would host visiting artists and friends including Carleton Watkins, Virgil Williams, and William Keith.  After studying in France in 1866 and immersing himself in the Barbizon manner, his approach became more expressive.
During an 1872 tour of Hill's work in New York, an art critic pitted Albert Bierstadt's "In The Rocky Mountains" against Thomas Hill's magnificent "Canyon of the Sierra," each expansive and breathtaking mountain landscapes, declaring:
"Mr. Bierstadt's imagination is beyond his powers of execution and...he generally fails to give a satisfactory and perfect picture through attempting too much. In this respect, he compares unfavorably with his rival, and we think, superior, Thomas Hill, who possesses a freshness, originality, and power which nothing of Mr. Bierstadt's, that we have seen, can equal."
To be sure, moments such as this helped secure Hill's stature as one of the most accomplished American artists of his day (not to mention ensure his financial success) with clients in San Francisco and beyond.
Condition: Visual: Overall good condition. Occasional specks of grime commensurate with age. Craquelure scattered throughout.
Blacklight: No evidence of restoration.
Frame: 29" H x 39" W x 2.5" D
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