STANFIELD and TURNER
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Mary Hill (1870-1947)
"Rainbow over High Street, Hampstead"
Watercolour on heavy paper, 26.1 cm x 29.9 cm, signed lower left: "Mary Hill". In a gilt composition frame external size 49.2 cm x 49.2 cm. Price: £520.
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Mary Hill
"Rainbow over High Street, Hampstead"
(shown in frame)
Label transferred from old backing board
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Mary Hill - painter of Hampstead
A watery sun emerges over a rain-soaked Hampstead High Street after a shower, and a rainbow is glimpsed above the rooftops. Lively children on the pavement have noticed that the rain has ceased, but a cautious or distracted passer-by continues to hold her umbrella aloft.
The scene is enlivened by the reflections of buildings and people on the wet surfaces of the street. The viewpoint is taken from the junction with Greenhill, and shows the buildings on the northeast side of the High Street coinciding with today's No's 16-18.
Known for her watercolours of Hampstead locations in the 1920s and 1930s, Mary Hill lived in the suburb for many years, having addresses at North End Lodge, South End Road and Gayton Crescent. She also resided at different times (according to information published by the Camden History Society) at Thurlow Road and Stanfield House in the High Street.
In 1938, Mary Hill published Hampstead in Light and Shade, a book of anecdotes about local people and places, illustrated with her own drawings.
More than one version of the present watercolour is known. An identical composition by Mary Hill with only tiny differences of brushwork was with a London gallery some 15 years ago, when it featured under the title Hampstead High Street. The present version comes with an old and discoloured label in the artist's hand, transferred from the painting's former backing board. It reads: "Rainbow over High Street, Hampstead by Miss Mary Hill, 4 Gayton Crescent, Hampstead". It additionally bears the number "1.".
The artist did not have to go far to set up her easel: her address in Gayton Crescent was just a few hundred metres from the spot depicted in the painting.
The watercolour has been newly mounted within its original frame.
Mary Hill's vantage point is still recognisable, but much has changed.
The young tree on the opposite side of the road (or its successor) has matured to obscure the buildings in their contemporary iteration, and the rainbow over the High Street has long since faded.
Also for sale: Please scroll down for an autograph note written by Mary Hill on the verso of a postcard of one of her own Hampstead views (Perrin's Court).
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The postcard reproduces Mary Hill's watercolour of Perrin's Court in Hampstead.
A wartime thank-you note on a postcard of the artist's own painting.
A posted postcard with a printed reproduction of Mary Hill's watercolour of Perrin's Court in Hampstead on recto and a handwritten message by the artist in black ink addressed to a Mr Pollock of Bushey Heath on verso. Postmarked "Hampstead" and dated February 1940. Signed "Mary Hill". Inscribed "Hampstead" in pencil on recto in Mary Hill's handwriting. 14 cm x 8.9 cm. Price: £27
Mary Hill - a wartime postcard
Writing at the end of February 1940, Mary Hill thanks her correspondent for obtaining some oranges for her and says she is getting over a recent chill. The message reads:
Tuesday This is to thank you very much for getting the oranges for me. So good of you, just like you - They were very good ones. I am practically all right again now, just a sort of chill I expect. I hope you are all right. Yours Mary Hill
The card, which bears a Hampstead postmark dated 20th February 1940 and a cancelled 1d George VI postage stamp, is addressed to Mr. Pollock, 2 Titian Avenue, Bushey Heath, Herts.
Although not formally rationed in the war years, oranges, as Mary Hill's postcard shows, were already hard to come by in the first winter of the war.
Artists