Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hill, David Octavius
HILL, DAVID OCTAVIUS (1802–1870), landscape and portrait painter, son of Thomas Hill, bookseller, Perth, was born in that city in 1802. Having early displayed considerable artistic taste, he was placed under Andrew Wilson, then superintendent of the School of Art at Edinburgh. His attention was principally directed towards landscape-painting, and among his first pictures were ‘Dunkeld at Sunset’ and two views of ‘The Tay at Perth,’ exhibited when he was twenty-one years of age. Hill acted as secretary to the Society of Artists in Edinburgh for eight years before the charter was granted in 1838 incorporating it into the Royal Scottish Academy, and occupied the post almost till his death. In 1841 he published a series of sixty pictures, engraved from sketches in oil made by him, illustrative of the scenery of the ‘Land of Burns,’ and this work has attained an immense popularity. His most important pictures were ‘Old and New Edinburgh, from the Castle,’ and ‘The Braes of Ballochmyle,’ painted for the late John Miller of Leithen, and engraved in 1850; ‘The River Tay from the Bridge at Perth;’ ‘Windsor Castle, Summer Evening;’ ‘Edinburgh from Mons Meg’ (Royal Academy, 1852); ‘Dunure Castle’ (Royal Academy, 1861); ‘River Tay’ (Royal Academy, 1862); ‘Vale of Forth’ (Royal Academy, 1868). The last great picture on which he was engaged was the historical work commemorative of the disruption from which the free church of Scotland sprang. It was entitled ‘Signing the Deed of Demission,’ and has about five hundred portraits of all the leading lay and clerical members who took part in that movement. This extensive work, begun in 1843 and completed in 1865, is now in the Free Church Assembly Hall, Edinburgh. It was the largest picture reproduced by the autotype process, and was the first in which photography was used as an aid to the artist in portraiture. On the recommendation of Sir David Brewster, Hill interested himself in the photographic experiments then being made by Robert Adamson of St. Andrews. Hill was the first to apply the new art to portraiture, and many of the calotypes of eminent men which he took are still in existence. In 1850 Hill was appointed one of the commissioners of the board of manufactures in Scotland, which has under its direction the Government School of Art and the National Gallery of Scotland. Two months before his death he resigned the secretaryship to the Academy, and was voted the full amount of his salary as a pension. He died on 17 May 1870, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, and was buried in the Dean cemetery, where his widow has placed a bronze bust, executed by herself. He was twice married, his second wife—a sister of Sir Noel Paton, R.S.A.—being Amelia Robertson Paton, the well-known sculptor, who (1891) survives. His only daughter, Chattie Hill, wife of Mr. W. Scott Dalgleish, predeceased him.
Hill did great service to art by originating the Art Union of Edinburgh, the first institution of the kind established in the kingdom. As an artist he occupied a high position in that school of Scottish landscape-painters to which Horatio McCulloch, R.S.A., belonged, and which has now few adherents. His works were admirably suited for engraving, and he is better known by reproductions through this medium than by his original pictures.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Art Journal, 1869–70; Edinburgh Evening Courant, 18 May 1870; private information.]