John Hill
John Hill
1770 - 1850
Engraver of English birth. He was one of the most important graphic artists working in America in the first half of the 19th century. He learnt his craft in London and worked for publishers of prints and illustrated books, including Rudolph Ackermann. Hill achieved considerable success as an aquatinter of works by J. M. W. Turner, Thomas Rowlandson, Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg and others, but concern about his ability to support his growing family in a highly competitive market encouraged him to leave England. Settling in Philadelphia, PA, in 1816, he quickly became the leading printmaker in the area.
Hill was closely associated with two projects important to the history of American printmaking: Joshua Shaw’s Picturesque Views of American Scenery and William Guy Wall’s Hudson River Portfolio (issued serially between 1821 and 1825). Begun in 1819, Picturesque Views was the first major series of landscape scenes, often of a Romantic nature, to be printed in America. Since the 17th century American views had been published generally in England or on the Continent. With Hill’s arrival, quality aquatints were produced in America. Wall’s Hudson River Portfolio is a cornerstone in the development of American printing and landscape painting. The 20 views trace for 320 km the course of the Hudson River from Luzerne to Governor’s Island, near Manhattan. The undertaking required Hill to move to New York in 1822. Throughout the 1830s he worked on further editions of this enormously popular series, an American variation on similar projects dealing with British and European rivers. Hill also engraved numerous single prints and pairs of views, compiled two artists’ manuals and contributed plates to Fielding Lucas’s Progressive Drawing Book (1827–8). Around 1840 Hill retired to Clarksville, Rockland Co., not far from New York. [Edward J. Nygren and Annette Blaugrund. "Hill." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 8, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T038116pg1.]
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