Thomas Hill
British-born Thomas Hill immigrated to Massachusetts with his family when he was young. He later found himself drawn west, eventually settling in San Francisco, where he made the grandeur of California the subject of many paintings. Even while traveling on the East Coast and in Europe, he continued to paint California scenes. He made annual sketching trips to Yosemite, Mount Shasta, and the White Mountains, and he kept a studio at Yosemite’s Wawona Hotel (now Big Trees Lodge) in his final years.
How do outdoor activities make you feel?
This painting shows how a reverence for nature helped cultivate rural, recreational tourism. The popularity of fishing was greatly enhanced by the publication of the first American edition (1847) of Isaak Walton’s legendary fishing guide The Compleat Angler: The Contemplative Man’s Recreation (1653). While some Americans fished for sustenance and others “angled” for pleasure, most believed that fishing enhanced the participant’s physical and mental health.
Museum purchase, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum
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