Carl Fredrik Hill
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"Ornamentik av häst och människor"
Ink on brown paper. Image 33 x 18 cm.
Provenance
Bukowski Auktioner, auction 546, Internationella Höstauktionen 27 - 30 November 2007, lot 112.
Exhibitions
Färg och Form, Stockholm, "Carl Fredrik Hill", April - May 1943, cat. no. 302.
More information
At the beginning of 1878, Carl Fredrik Hill's mental health deteriorated. The diagnosis, which today would be termed paranoid schizophrenic psychosis, greatly affected him, and he was admitted to a clinic. Despite this, he continued to draw throughout. In 1882, with help from his family, Hill was moved from France to St. Lars Hospital in Lund. He left the hospital in 1883 and moved back to his childhood home where he was cared for by his mother and his sister Hedda.
From 1883 to 1911, Hill lived in his own world and produced several thousand drawings with various motifs and techniques (ink, India ink, chalk, pastel, and watercolour). He primarily used coloured and black chalk, but when he had access to more materials, he could fill large sheets of paper with compositions in ink, gold, and silver tinctures. His inspiration often came from illustrated books and magazines, as well as from his own early works that surrounded him at home. He also authored a book, called "Versmanuskriptet". On 22 February 1911, Carl Fredrik Hill died from complications after pneumonia.
Today, Malmö Art Museum holds over 2600 drawings by Carl Fredrik Hill. The vast majority were donated by Hedda Hill's estate in 1931. The collection also includes 25 paintings, most of which are oil on canvas.
Artist
Carl Fredrik Hill was a Swedish artist born in Lund. Hill is considered one of Sweden's formost landscape painters. His fate and artistry are perhaps the strangest but most interesting in Swedish art history. Born in an academic home in Lund, despite his father's protests, he managed to begin studies at the Art Academy in Stockholm and then traveled to France, where he came in contact with Corot's landscape painting. He found his inspiration in Barbizon and later on the River Oise, in Luc-sur-Mer and Bois-le-Roi. He painted frantically with the hope of being accepted into the Salon de Paris. Already during his student years, he struggled with an incipient mental illness and at the age of 28 he was taken to the mental hospital in Passy. During the hospital stay he began his rich production of drawings and then continued with the production after his return to Lund, where he was cared for by his family for the rest of his life. In thousands drawings, a fantasy world of figures scenes appears. Today, Hill's river landscape and flowering fruit trees from the years in France, together with the visionary drawings from the period of illness in Lund, have received great recognition. His art depicts a loneliness and longing that is easy to get caught up in. He is mainly represented at the Malmö Museum and at the National Museum in Stockholm.
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