John and Margaret Hill collected American Western art for sixty years, focusing on works from the Taos Society of Artists, the Santa Fe School and the American Regionalists who captured the monumental landscapes of their beloved home. John Hill was born in Oklahoma and raised in Colorado. Margaret Hill was raised on a ranch in New Mexico. The Hills began collecting soon after they married in 1930, and their mutual interest in the myth of the American West and their love of the surrounding landscape determined their collecting focus. Landscapes, genre scenes and portraits of Native Americans are the core of the collection, offering a survey of western imagery and the romance of the pioneering days of the old West.
The Hills collection was in part gifted to Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art in 1992, with the remainder left as a bequest from the Hills in 1994. We will be offering a selection of works from the collection in our April 22-23rd auction. Highlights include Gerard Curtis Delano’s oil, Centaurs of the Canyon, lot 150, estimate $3,000-5,000; Warren Eliphalet Rollins’ oil, Pueblo, lot 146, estimate $3,000-4,000; and Edgar S. Paxson’s watercolor, Flathead of Today, lot 138, estimate $2,000-5,000.
We will be offering additional works from the Hill Collection in forthcoming auctions.