Mrs. George Hill
Sir Henry Raeburn·c. 1790/1800
Historical Context
Raeburn's Mrs. George Hill from around 1790-1800 is a female portrait from his middle period when his practice was well established and his style fully mature. Hill's wife — likely connected to the Edinburgh academic and ecclesiastical elite that constituted part of Raeburn's social world — is rendered with the direct, unsentimental approach that made Raeburn's female portraits distinctive within British portraiture of the period. Where Reynolds idealized his female sitters and Gainsborough transformed them into decorative presences, Raeburn confronted them as persons — his Mrs. Hill has the same quality of psychological reality as his male legal and military subjects, the flattery of portraiture dissolved in honest observation.
Technical Analysis
The portrait demonstrates Raeburn's mature handling of female subjects with warm, naturalistic flesh tones. Strong but sympathetic lighting models the features with characteristic directness, and the costume is handled with appropriate attention to fabric and color.
Provenance
Painted for the Reverend George Hill [1750-1819], St. Andrews, Scotland; by descent to John Sheriff Hill [d. 1900], Dingwall, Inverness; (sale, Fraser, Inverness, 1900); bought by (Wallis & Son, London); (M. Knoedler & Co., New York), by 1911;[1] purchased by 1925[2] by Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.; gift by 1937 to his daughter, Ailsa Mellon Bruce [1901-1969], New York; bequest 1970 to NGA. [1] James Greig, _Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A.: His Life and Works_, London, 1911: 48. [2] Mellon owned the painting by the time he lent it to the exhibition _Paintings by Old Masters from Pittsburgh Collections_, shown at the Carnegie Institute in 1925.
