Western Art, including Contemporary Native American

Provenance:

Sullivan Goss Fine Art Gallery, Santa Barbara, California

Although he was born in England and spent much of his young adult life on the East coast of the United States, Thomas Hill’s (British/American, 1829-1908) greatest source of inspiration was the landscape of the American West. Revered by collectors of the Hudson River School and Western art alike, Thomas Hill’s paintings illustrate the vast beauty and grandeur of the American landscape. 

Sketching trips to the White Mountains of New Hampshire early in his career aligned Hill with members of the Hudson River School who valued the practice of plein-air painting. Throughout his career, Hill would use the technique of oil sketching en plein-air – creating small, sketch-like oil paintings while immersed in the scenery – to document the sources of his inspiration. 

Like many other Americans, Hill moved his family to California in 1861 in search of prosperity and new sources of inspiration. It was with this change of scenery that Thomas Hill developed into the artist we revere as a great American landscape painter. The rising mountains, rolling hills, towering forests and lush scenery were his muses and his work was driven by his absolute awe of nature. 

In his lifetime, Thomas Hill’s monumental landscape paintings were well received, earning him comparison to Albert Bierstadt. His patrons included some of the most important figures in 19th-century California business and society, including E.B Crocker, William Ralston, D.O. Mills and Leland Stanford.  

In his Indian on Horseback Amongst the Sequoias, Hill beautifully depicts the overwhelming size, vastness and splendor of the Sequoia National Forest of California. Though a more intimate scene than many of his works, this image delivers the same sense of monumentality that we see in his depictions of the Yosemite landscape. The size and density of the trees dwarves the figures of the Native Americans making their camp and illustrates just how small humans really are compared to nature. Hill’s technique of detailing the figures in the foreground, while placing slightly less emphasis on the background, helps to show just how massive and lush the forest really is. This is a technique that Hill employed often in his work, almost as if implying that the grandness of nature is too large to depict precisely or to understand fully. Hill was driven by his own experiences within the natural world, by his own sense of smallness amongst the spectacular, sprawling landscapes. Indian on Horseback Amongst the Sequoias encourages the viewer to feel totally immersed in the scenery and experience the sense of awe and wonder that drove Thomas Hill to create his renowned works of art. 

Overall good condition. Craquelure visible throughout upper half in raking light. One small point of loss along upper edge, center, resulting from most significant point of craquelure. Typical fluorescence of white pigments. UV light does not reveal any additional damage, repairs or inpainting. Please request additional images.  Framed dimensions: 48 x 36 1/2 inches