Thomas Hill was born in England in 1829. He came to the United States in 1844. By the 1860s, he was becoming one of America’s foremost landscape painters, joining such luminaries as Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, and William Keith.
These acclaimed artists, among others, came to California, with Yosemite being their primary subject to paint. Abraham Lincoln had designated Yosemite a public park in 1864, and its popularity soon exploded, thanks in part to artworks that showed its breathtaking beauty. Not surprisingly, Yosemite became the most artistically rendered subject in California. Less well-known is that the second most popular subject was Mount Shasta.
Thomas Hill turned out many paintings of these two locations, as well as paintings of numerous other places across the country, including Yellowstone, which in 1872 was designated the first national park in the world, and Alaska. To view his art is to see the work of one of the most prolific of all American landscape artists.
Although Hill’s most famous painting is The Driving of the Last Spike — at Promontory Point on May 10, 1869 — he is best known for his depictions of Yosemite. (For example, his 1865 painting, View of the Yosemite Valley, was chosen to be the backdrop of the head table at Barack Obama’s inaugural luncheon, to commemorate Lincoln’s signing of the Yosemite Grant.) Hill also produced more than forty paintings depicting Mount Shasta from a wide array of perspectives.
Quite fascinating was Hill’s clear interest in fishing, the subject of some of his most exquisite sketches, dating primarily to the 1870s. He painted and sketched scenes of fishermen alone and in small parties, by streams and in boats. He also painted scenes of Native Americans spearing salmon and at a salmon festival. Among his works are Thomas Hill and Virgil Williams with Their Wives Fishing; The Angler; Night Fishing, Lake Tahoe; Fishing, Fallen Leaf Lake; Trout Fishing; Fishing on a Stream Near Mount Tallac; and Lone Fisherman in Yosemite.
Hill died in 1908, and is buried in Oakland.
