Mellbreak (John Peel's Hill)
Derek Hill (Southampton 1916 - London 2000)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
Sep 1994 (dated to reverse)
Materials
Oil on board
Measurements
170 x 270 mm
Place of origin
Lake District (England)
Order this imageCollection
Mottisfont, Hampshire
NT 769786
Caption
Derek Hill was best known in Britain as a portrait painter, but is now more famous for his landscape paintings. This view is of Mellbreak in Cumbria, viewed from the village of Loweswater. John Peel was a famous Cumbrian huntsman who was associated with this area of the Lake District. He started off studying stage design in Munich, Paris and Vienna (1933-5), and for a time worked under Karl Schwitters. By 1938 he had abandoned the idea of stage design and began to paint. He painted the portraits of a huge cast of characters, including Bernard Berenson, Lord Mountbatten, Isaiah Berlin, John Betjeman, and Noël Coward, amongst many others. Hill's landscapes, by contrast, are lonely and seldom peopled. As a director of the British School in Rome in the 1950s, Hill nourished such talent as Michael Andrews, John Bratby and Anthony Fry. His own art collection was very fine with great examples of the misty Thames landscape and early abstract paintings of his friend, Victor Pasmore.
Summary
Oil painting on board, Mellbreak (John Peel's Hill) by Derek Hill (Southampton 1916 - London 2000), September 1994. A view of Mellbreak from Loweswater, Cumbria. Painted wooden frame with gold edges.
Provenance
Presented by Derek Hill (1916 - 2000) through The National Art Collections Fund (Art Fund), 1996
Credit line
Mottisfont Abbey,The Derek Hill Collection (presented to the National Trust through the National Art-Collections Fund in 1996)
Makers and roles
Derek Hill (Southampton 1916 - London 2000), artist