Early life Hill was born at
Southampton, in
Hampshire, the son of a wealthy sugar trader.
Career He first worked as a theatre designer in
Leningrad in the 1930s, and later as an historian. In the
Second World War he registered as a
conscientious objector and worked on a farm. His long association with Ireland began when he visited
Glenveagh Castle,
County Donegal to paint the portrait of the Irish-American art collector,
Henry McIlhenny, whose grandfather had emigrated to the United States from the nearby village of
Milford, and who subsequently made a fortune from his patent gas meter. Hill began to enjoy increased success as a
portrait painter from the 1960s; his subjects including many notable
composers, musicians, politicians and statesmen, such as broadcaster
Gay Byrne, Jerusalem mayor
Teddy Kollek and the
Prince of Wales. He was also an enthusiastic
art collector and traveller, with a wide range of friends such as
Bryan Guinness and
Isaiah Berlin.
Greta Garbo visited Hill in the 1970s, a visit which formed inspiration for
Frank McGuinness' 2010 play
Greta Garbo Came to Donegal. In 1981, he donated to the state his home, St. Columb's Rectory, near the village of
Churchill, County Donegal, which he had owned since 1954, along with a considerable collection including work by
Pablo Picasso,
Edgar Degas,
Georges Braque,
Graham Sutherland,
Anna Ticho and
Jack Butler Yeats. An exhibition of his work and personal art collection can be seen at the house and associated
Glebe Gallery at Churchill, near
Letterkenny. Another collection of his work is held at
Mottisfont Abbey. Many of his landscapes portray scenes from
Tory Island, where he had a painting hut for years, and started and then mentored the artists' community there, teaching the local fishermen how to paint. This led on to the informal but busy "Tory School" of artists such as James Dixon and Anton Meenan, who found that they had the time to paint and used their wild surroundings as a dramatic subject. Hill was made a
CBE in 1997. A retrospective exhibition was arranged for and by him at the
Royal Hibernian Academy in 1998. In 1999, he was made an
honorary Irish citizen by Irish
President Mary McAleese. He died at a London hospital on 30 July 2000, aged 83, and is buried in Hampshire in the South of England with his parents. Memorial services were held for him in
Dublin at
St Patrick's Cathedral, as well as
St James's Church, Piccadilly, London, and his local church in Trentagh, County Donegal. ==Biographies==