Bio Robert Jerome Hill. (1878-1942)
Austin, Dallas. Landscape, portrait and miniature painter, illustrator, cartoonist, short-story writer, commercial artist, lecturer, craftsman, teacher, curator.
Born in Austin, Hill attended public schools there and the University of Texas. While in Austin, he received lessons from Janet Downie. Hill moved to New York City in 1900. There he studied at the Art Students League of New York under John Henry Twachtman, Robert Frederick Blum, George Brandt Bridgman, Clifford Carleton, Walter Appleton Clark, Louis Loeb, and Howard Chandler Christy. He attended the lectures of William Merritt Chase and Kenyon Cox and studied afterward in Munich.
In 1902 He returned to Austin and worked for a year before moving to Dallas in 1904. There he worked as an illustrator for the Dallas Morning News and in 1906-07 taught drawing and design at Bryan High School while studying under Hans Kunz-Meyer. Hill worked as a freelance illustrator in New York in 1907 but returned to Dallas in 1908 to work as a draftsman and photographer until 1917, when he began to painting full time. In 1932 Hill became the first curator of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts where he gave a series of gallery talks. Hill's cartoons appeared in Harper's Magazine, Harper's Weekly, and Life. he died in a Dallas hospital an was buried in Austin.
Exhibition: Brooklyn , New York Museum (19070. Annual Texas Artist exhibition, Fort Worth (1917-19, 1922-29, 1931, 1933-37). Annual Exhibition fo Texas aritst, Dallas Woman's Forum (1918, 1927, 1929). Annual Exhibition of the State Fair of Texas, Dallas (1920-1941). Southern State Art League Annual Exhibition (1924, 1930, 1932). Annual Allied Arts Exhibition, Dallas (1928-31, 1933). Dallas Public Art Gallery.
Collections: Daughters of the Confederacy Museum and Texas Federation of Women's Clubs, Austin. Oak Cliff High School and Adamson High School, Dallas. Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches. Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library, San Antonio.
Affiliations: American Federation of Arts. Dallas Art Association. Dallas Public Art Gallery. Fran Reaugh Art Club, Dallas, Southern states Art. League. Texas Art league. Texas Fine Arts Association.