Altus Arts

Description

A view of King's Lynn Market Square by Adrian Hill (1895-1977), circa 1920, in watercolour, signed. Details verso.

Adrian Hill is a well documented and accomplished artist, remembered as an Official War Artist in WWI and the first ‘art therapist’. This fine and detailed work is a study of the Market Square at King’s Lynn, circa 1920.

Born in Charlton, Kent, Adrian Hill studied at St John’s Wood School of Art, 1912-14, then at the Royal College of Art, 1919-20. During WWI, Hill was an Official War Artist, producing dramatic and outstanding sketches and paintings from the front line, many of which can now be seen in the Imperial War Museum, London.

Hill exhibited widely, at the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of British Artists, the New English Art Club, the Royal Hibernian Academy and the Royal Institute of Painters in Oil, in the provinces and overseas, notably at the Paris Salon. His work can also be found in many public collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum.

As a result of injuries sustained during WWII, Hill developed revolutionary theories of ‘art’ as therapy and turned to his own paintings as a release from the boredom of recovery. Unwittingly, he became the first ‘Art Therapist’, a term he coined, and campaigned to promote the availability of art and artists. His story is documented in his books Painting out of Illness and Art versus Illness and many subsequent studies of the use of art in therapy. Netherene, a state psychiatric hospital, made history as the first hospital to employ Hill as ‘art therapist’ in 1946. His influence on the use of art in therapy has been widely documented in many subsequent journals, books and papers.

Hill was also an accomplished and enthusiastic teacher, working at Hornsey School of Art and on the television in its early days after WWII. He also wrote many books on art, including On Drawing and Painting Trees, 1936, and The Pleasures of Painting, 1952. He lived at Midhurst, Sussex.