Thomas Hill (1829-1908), Looking up Yosemite Valley, California (or Yosemite Valley from Inspiration Point), 1889? Oil on canvas. Gift of J. Monroe Thorington, Class of 1915.

Label pasted to the verso [above] and inscription on the canvas [below]

We are fortunate to have five paintings and two prints by the British-born artist Thomas Hill (1829-1908). Because of our ongoing renovation, three of Hill’s paintings were recently moved back into storage. Here are the images so they won’t disappear entirely.

Hill’s studio, on the grounds of the Wawona Hotel, is now a National Park Service visitor center. The NPS has posted a good overview of the artist and his Yosemite paintings at: http://www.nps.gov/yose/historyculture/thomas-hill.htm

In 1872, Thomas Hill moved back to San Francisco with his wife Charlotte Hawkes and their nine children. Here, amid the beauty and grandeur of the California landscape, he thrived and became an important part of the growing California art scene. During the late 1870s, Hill became increasingly popular as a landscape painter, particularly of Yosemite subjects. After a sketching tour in the spring of 1879, he returned with over 30 oil sketches, quickly turning several into larger paintings.

Hill’s Studio in Wawona, in a community near Yosemite’s Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, was finished by January 1884. In the 1880s, he separated from his wife, and spent less time in San Francisco and Oakland.

Increasingly, he found happiness and success in Yosemite. By 1886, Hill settled at Wawona and, when not traveling, spent summers there and winters in nearby Raymond. Hill’s work at Wawona was prolific and modestly profitable—in three years he sold 163 paintings. He seemed to enjoy the relaxed lifestyle and easy popularity as Wawona’s resident artist. As with many artists, his fortunes fluctuated with the erratic art market. After 1880, Hill’s popularity declined and it became increasingly difficult for him to sell paintings. Although Hill suffered a stroke in 1896, he continued to paint, but his sales slowed and his travels were limited. As late as 1906, it was reported that he was “still at work and his easel is set up at a very early hour each morning.” Thomas Hill died on June 30, 1908, in Raymond, California.

Thomas Hill (1829-1908), Nevada Fall, Yosemite Valley, 1889. Thorington Alpine Views Collection. Gift of J. Monroe Thorington, Class of 1915.

Thomas Hill (1829-1908), Vernal Falls, Yosemite, 1889. Oil on canvas. Thorington Alpine Views Collection. Gift of J. Monroe Thorington, Class of 1915. Signed and dated: “T. Hill // 1889”.

Following the art program designed by architect Frederick Fisher, 2013 Gold Medal recipient by the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, several new paintings have been added to the walls of Firestone Library. Painting and sculpture is now on view from the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton Campus Collections, and Firestone’s Rare Books and Special Collections.
Sidney Goodman (American, born 1936), Lawn Practice, 1971. Oil on canvas. Princeton University Art Museum. Gift of Liza and Michael Moses 2007-151

William Kienbusch (American 1914-1980), To the Ocean, Outer Sand Island, 1957. Oil on canvas. Princeton University Art Museum. Gift of James H. Beal, Class of 1920 and Mrs. Beal; y1962-5

Welcome back to portraits of James McCosh, Samuel Cox, and James Madison, freshly glazed.

Junius Brutus Stearns (1810–1885) painted over a dozen fishing scenes, including Elliott and his Friends (1857). The nearly life size canvas depicts his colleague, portrait painter Charles Loring Elliott (1812-1868) at the left; the humorist Frederic S. Cozzens (1818-1869) on the right; and Lewis Gaylord Clark (1808-1873), editor and publisher of The Knickerbocker, standing in the center.

Whether or not the three men actually spent time together fishing is unknown but they were certainly all friends. Elliott made at least 11 portraits of Clark and of his wife before being celebrated with an extended biography in Clark’s magazine.

In the year before he posed for Elliott and his Friends, Cozzens published “The Sparrowgrass Papers, or Living in the Country” in The Knickerbocker. The story tells the humorous adventures of Mr. Sparrowgrass when he moves his family out of the city and experiences the joys of fishing (among other activities).

“…the slow and sleepy village presents a contrast, which, upon the whole, can scarcely be considered as favorable to the latter. Plumbers are very slow in the country; carpenters are not swift; locksmiths seldom take time by the forelock; the painter will go off fishing; the grocer on a pic-nic; the shoemaker to the menagerie.”– The Sparrowgrass Papers, 1856.

Our donor, Carl Otto Kretzschmar von Kienbusch, Class of 1906 (1884-1976) was an avid fisherman who gave the library Cozzens’ book at the same time he donated Stearns’ painting. Each June, he spent a month fishing for salmon on the rivers of eastern Canada. Even after he went blind in 1966, Kienbusch continued to fish with the help of a guide.

Junius Brutus Stearns (1810-1885), Elliott and his Friends, 1857. Oil on canvas. Gift of Otto von Kienbusch, Class of 1906.

Frederic S. Cozzens (1818-1869), The Sparrowgrass Papers, or, Living in the Country (New York: Derby & Jackson; Cincinnati : H.W. Derby, 1856). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton 644 and Rare Books: Otto von Kienbusch Angling Collection (ExKi) PS1449.C64 xS6