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Lot Essay
At the age of 31, Thomas Hill moved to California from his home in Philadelphia. In his studio in the Mercantile Library Building, which he kept from 1862-1864, he painted portraits, genre scenes and landscapes of California. In 1863 he captured a moment in the popular culture of San Francisco when he painted perhaps his most elaborate and compositionally complex work to date, The Trial Scene from the Merchant of Venice. The Merchant of Venice was one of the most popular works by Shakespeare to be performed in mid-Nineteenth Century America, and Hill based his painting on the performance locally by the famous Shakespearean actors Charles Kean and his wife Ellen Tree who were touring throughout the United States from England.
Hill established himself as a professional artist quickly in his adopted city and when the California Art Union was formed in 1865, he was chosen to be its first leader. The Union mounted their first exhibition that same year and Hill won a prize for The Trial Scene from the Merchant of Venice. It addition to tremendous reaction from his peers at the Union, the painting received great response critically. "One critic noted, 'No. 44, The Trial Scene, from the Merchant of Venice, by Thomas Hill . . . the groupings are fine, the positions anatomically correct, and the draperies well arranged; the colony is natural and the whole picture shows the skill and judgement of the artist." (as quoted in M.D. Arkelian, Thomas Hill: The Grand View, Oakland, California, 1980, p. 14)
The Union purchased the painting for $700 in gold and they intended to produce copies of the image for each of their members. "Benjamin Parke Avery, a professional writer and art critic, . . . wrote 'Photographic copies of Hill's Merchant of Venice had been promised to each subscriber to the California Art Union, but the promise could not be kept when the Art Union, through lack of good management, perhaps, died in its first year.'" (as quoted in Thomas Hill: The Grand View, p. 14)
Thomas Hill would become one of the preeminent painters of Yosemite and the High Sierras, but it was partially due to the success and popularity of the present work that he is the artist we know today.
Hill established himself as a professional artist quickly in his adopted city and when the California Art Union was formed in 1865, he was chosen to be its first leader. The Union mounted their first exhibition that same year and Hill won a prize for The Trial Scene from the Merchant of Venice. It addition to tremendous reaction from his peers at the Union, the painting received great response critically. "One critic noted, 'No. 44, The Trial Scene, from the Merchant of Venice, by Thomas Hill . . . the groupings are fine, the positions anatomically correct, and the draperies well arranged; the colony is natural and the whole picture shows the skill and judgement of the artist." (as quoted in M.D. Arkelian, Thomas Hill: The Grand View, Oakland, California, 1980, p. 14)
The Union purchased the painting for $700 in gold and they intended to produce copies of the image for each of their members. "Benjamin Parke Avery, a professional writer and art critic, . . . wrote 'Photographic copies of Hill's Merchant of Venice had been promised to each subscriber to the California Art Union, but the promise could not be kept when the Art Union, through lack of good management, perhaps, died in its first year.'" (as quoted in Thomas Hill: The Grand View, p. 14)
Thomas Hill would become one of the preeminent painters of Yosemite and the High Sierras, but it was partially due to the success and popularity of the present work that he is the artist we know today.