Currently not on view
Cucumbers,
ca. 1860
John William Hill, 1812–1879; born London, England; died West Nyack, NY
x1991-73
Around 1855, after reading Ruskin’s influential Modern Painters, John William Hill changed course and adopted a style closer to that of his son, John Henry Hill, a Pre-Raphaelite artist. The elder Hill began to paint watercolors directly from nature, employing a stipple technique of tiny dots of color in place of his previous method of broad washes cohered by an underlying drawing. (Compare Cucumbers with the artist’s earlier Broadway Looking South from Liberty Street, on view in the previous gallery.) The often down-to-earth subjects of Hill’s later work accord well with the Ruskinian precept that the most compelling beauty is found
in the most ordinary objects.
in the most ordinary objects.
Information
Title
Cucumbers
Dates
ca. 1860
Maker
Medium
Watercolor
Dimensions
18.9 x 31.7 cm (7 7/16 x 12 1/2 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, Laura P. Hall Memorial Fund
Object Number
x1991-73
Signatures
Signed in watercolor, lower right: J.W. Hill
Culture
Period
Type
Materials
Subject
Richard York Gallery, New York;
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1991," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 51, no. 1 (1992): p. 22-78., p. 74
- John Wilmerding et al., American Art in the Princeton University Art Museum: volume 1: drawings and watercolors, (Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 135, cat. no. 28; p. 137 (illus.); p. 336, checklist no. 778
