WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART 27th September 2021 at 6pm

148 120 Nathaniel Hill RHA (1860-1930) CONVALESCENT oil on canvas signed with initials 40.50 by 31in. (102.9 by 78.7cm) Frame Dimensions: 53 by 40in. (134.6 by 101.6cm) Cracking visible on close inspection throughout the work. This appears stable and has not led to flaking of the paint. Otherwise good condition. Provenance: Taylor Scholarship, RDS, 1883; McComas (?) family, Rock Road, Blackrock, Co. Dublin; probably purchased c.1917 by father of Ita Hackett; By descent to Ita Hackett, Donnybrook, Co. Dublin; Adam’s, 7 December 2016, lot 80; Private collection Exhibited: Taylor Scholarship, Royal Dublin Society, 1883, entitled ‘Convalescence’; Royal Hibernian Society, 1884, catalogue no. 258, entitled ‘Convalescent’ Literature: Campbell, Julian, ‘Hill, Nathaniel’, in Painting, 1600-1900, ed. by N. Figgis, RIA/Yale, 2014, p.301 €30,000-€40,000 (£25,640-£34,190 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot120 Nathaniel Hill was one of a circle of highly talented young artists associated with Walter Osborne in the 1880s. They studied together in Dublin and Antwerp, painted open-air subjects in Brittany and England, and then helped to introduce a new continental-inspired naturalism into Irish art. Hill also painted genre scenes, children and portraits. During his student years he won many prizes and he exhibited his work regularly. Yet he was a slow, painstaking worker. Only a few of his pictures are in public collections, the majority remaining in private collections. Nathaniel Hill was born into a Quaker family in Drogheda, Co. Louth in 1861. His father, Richard, had set up the oatmeal milling company R.R. Hill & Sons, Drogheda. Hill went to Dublin in 1877, studying in the Metropolitan School of Art, then the Royal Hibernian Academy Schools, exhibiting at the RHA for the first time in 1880. In autumn 1881, together with his contemporaries Osborne, Joseph M. Kavanagh and John J. Greene, Hill went to Antwerp to study in the Academie Royale, a pupil of Realist painter Charles Verlat. In 1883, he was awarded second prize in Painting from Life. Hill was also awarded Taylor Scholarships in Dublin on three occasions, and continued exhibiting at the RHA. Hill also painted in villages in Brittany and England, sometimes in the company of Osborne. He painted two versions of ‘Breton Peasants Waiting at a Convent Door’ (1884), the second of which was sold at Adam’s in 2010. He sometimes depicted the same motifs as Osborne, for example ‘Goose Girl in a Breton Farmyard’ (1884) (formerly AIB collection, now Crawford Gallery, Cork). Osborne painted a small study of Hill painting at Walberswick, Suffolk and Hill drew a portrait of Osborne in charcoal (National Gallery of Ireland). Back in Ireland, Hill was based at his family home, Queensboro, Drogheda. He continued to exhibit at the RHA, being elected an associate in 1892 and a full member of the RHA in 1894. He also showed at the Dublin Art Club. He painted sympathetic portraits of children, and some official portraits of local dignitaries. In his plein-air scenes, his early careful style gave way to a looser, more Impressionist manner. After 1895 he ceased to exhibit regularly.