 |
Nathaniel Hill was born in Drogheda of a well-off milling family. Hill
entered the Metropolitan School in Dublin in 1877 at the age of 16 and studied
there until 1880. He was a contemporary of Roderic
O'Conor and shared lodgings with him. He was also a contemporary
of Osborne and Kavanagh,
and together they went to Antwerp in September 1881, studying in Verlat's
Life class at the Academie Royale. Hill probably left Antwerp in 1883, heading
south to Brittany with Osborne and Kavanagh. In Brittany, as in Antwerp,
he painted rural and domestic subjects, and scenes of peasants, with the
same careful detail in different surfaces, steps, tiles and bricks as Osborne
as in the "Goose Girl in a Breton Farmyard,"
shown below. In England, Hill painted the genre and country scenes so characteristic
of Irish and English 'plen-airists' in the mid-1880s. Some of his portraits
may date from his Antwerp period because of their careful handling and darkness
of tone. He rarely signed his work, and cesased to exhibit after his mother
died (details of his later life are not clear).
Goose Girl in a Breton Farmyard, 1884
|
 |
| Sunshine, Brittany,
1884 |
| |
 Sunshine,
Brittany was recently rediscovered, having served as a firescreen for many
years. It shows a little courtyard, just behind the main square at Pont-Aven,
distinctive for its steps up to a double doorway and pigeon loft. Hill represents
two women in traditional bonnets, while sharp sunlight illuminates the rustic
architecture - worn stone steps, porch, weathered stonework and sagging
stone roof. A similar painting of the courtyard with a girl feeding chickens,
probably painted by Osborne, suggests how closely the two artists worked
on their Breton motifs. |
References:
- "The Irish Impressionists, Irish Artists
in France and Belgium 1850-1914". Julian Campbell. National Gallery
of Ireland. 1984
- "Onlookers in France, Irish Realist
and Impressionist Painters". Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork.
1993.
