Object Details
Object Essay
Born in England, Hill grew up in Massachusetts where he apprenticed to a decorator of coaches. He first studied art formally at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1853, and it was as a portrait painter that he began his career. A visit to Yosemite in 1862 made a lasting impression upon him and, after a year of study in Paris (1866–1867) and further work in Boston, Hill moved to the West in 1871. Centered in San Francisco, Hill also built a studio at Yosemite.1Spassky, 311–12. He became the painter most closely identified with this spectacular landscape, which had already been declared a public park, “inalienable for all time,” in 1864.
Forty years of painting this scenery, coupled with a great demand for his paintings, inevitably led to repetition and to a shorthand style, which, although flashy, often became rote. The Department of State’s Valley of the Yosemite, however, is an early work. It was painted in Boston from studies Hill made on his 1862 trip, and it is one of his freshest and most carefully considered works.
William Kloss
Excerpted from Clement E. Conger, et al. Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991.