Mabel Hill (3 March 1872 – 18 November 1956) was a New Zealand artist known for landscapes, portraits, and floral

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...

s. She taught at the Wellington School of Design.

Life

She was born at Cox's Creek,

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...

, New Zealand, the youngest child of Charles Hill, a hatter, and his wife, Eliza Ann Hulbert. Her eight siblings included the composer

Alfred Hill Alfred Hill may refer to: * Alfred John Hill (1862–1927), British railway engineer * Alfred Hill (cricketer, born 1865) (1865–1936), English cricketer * Alfred Hill (politician) (1867–1945), British Member of Parliament for Leicester West 19 ...

. In 1875, the family moved to

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...

. Hill attended primary school but not secondary school; instead, she went directly to the Wellington School of Design to study art in 1886. During her time at the Wellington School of Design, she met and was heavily influenced by the Scottish artist James M. Nairn, who introduced her to contemporary European art movements, especially

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...

. She subsequently became a teacher at the school, remaining until 1897. In 1898 she married John McIndoe, a printer, with whom she had four children. Her son John McIndoe was also an artist and later ran the family printing firm. Her son

Archibald McIndoe Sir Archibald Hector McIndoe (4 May 1900 – 11 April 1960) was a New Zealand plastic surgeon who worked for the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. He improved the treatment and rehabilitation of badly burned aircrew. Early life Archi ...

was a plastic surgeon. After their marriage, Hill and her husband moved to Dunedin, where they built a house with a studio for Hill. John died in 1916, and Hill then ran the printing business until her son took over. She travelled extensively after her children left home until the outbreak of the Second World War, visiting the United States (where her son Archibald lived for a time), Tahiti, and Europe. At the end of the war, she left New Zealand to settle permanently in England to be near Archibald. She died in

East Grinstead East Grinstead is a town in West Sussex, England, near the East Sussex, Surrey, and Kent borders, south of London, northeast of Brighton, and northeast of the county town of Chichester. Situated in the extreme northeast of the county, the civ ...

West Sussex West Sussex is a county in South East England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the shire districts of Adur, Arun, Chichester, Horsham, and Mid Sussex, and the boroughs of Crawley and Worthing. Covering an ar ...

Art career

Hill painted portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. Her style was influenced by Impressionism, and her palette tended toward muted colours. An avid gardener, she provided the illustrations for Barbara Douglas's book ''Pictures in a New Zealand Garden'' (1921). She exhibited mainly in New Zealand, in Dunedin,

Christchurch Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon River / ...

, and Wellington, among other locations. Failing eyesight forced her to give up painting in the early 1950s. She joined the Otago Art Society, exhibiting work under her birth name while serving on the society's council under her married name. Hill also taught art. She had private students, and she taught at Archerfield College, a private girls' school (1922-1925), and at the Barn Studio with

Alfred Henry O'Keeffe Alfred Henry O'Keeffe (21 July 1858 - 27 July 1941), was a notable New Zealand artist and art teacher, who spent the majority of his life in Dunedin. During the first quarter of the twentieth century, he was one of the few New Zealand artists to e ...

in the early 1920s. Of Hill's 400 known works, most remain in private collections. A retrospective was mounted by the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 1969.

References

External links

Website about Mabel HillItems associated with Mabel Hill in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa TongarewaPhotograph of Wellington Art Club exhibition featuring work by Mabel HillPhotograph of Mabel Hill and Sydney Lough Thompson
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hill, Mabel 1872 births 1956 deaths New Zealand women painters Hill-McIndoe-Gillies family 19th-century New Zealand painters 20th-century New Zealand painters 19th-century New Zealand women artists 20th-century New Zealand women artists People from Auckland