Robin Hill

Robin Hill (born 1932) is an Australian artist and writer, living in the United States and specialising in natural history subjects, especially birds.

Hill was born in Brisbane, the capital of the Australian state of Queensland, and moved to England with his family a year later, where he lived for the next fifteen years (until the age of 16). He was trained at the Wimbledon School of Art and, after moving back to Australia in 1948, at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. In the early to mid 1960s he worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as the host on Bush Quest with Robin Hill. Helping to pioneer this television documentary on Australian wildlife with the producer Ken Taylor, Hill used his serious knowledge and love of birds to observe the local bird and wild life across various bush and wetlands of Victoria. Bush Quest with Robin Hill featured Hill describing the Victorian birdlife in an often improvised and poetic style as well as painting particular birds in water colours that he had observed during the making of each episode. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation produced a total of six thirty-minute episodes all in black and white. During this period of the 1960s as well as producing and exhibiting his paintings Hill was commissioned by a popular biscuit company to produce paintings for biscuit tins. These tins featured Hill's paintings of birds and circulated commercially within Australia at the time. Robin Hill's granddaughter is the Australian video artist Adelle Mills.

Hill moved to the United States in 1971, where he established studios in Virginia and Washington D.C. Since then he has had several exhibitions, including a solo show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and an exhibition cosponsored by the World Wildlife Fund and the Australian Embassy. He has also undertaken numerous commissions. During the 1970s and 1980s, for example, Hill was commissioned to paint complete sets of American birds—The Endangered Species; The Ducks, Geese, and Swans; The Upland Game Birds; The Birds of Prey; and The Marsh Birds. This series of over 200 paintings is part of the permanent collection of the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia, which opened in 1992.

Publications

In addition to numerous articles in newspapers and magazines, Hill’s publications include:

• 1960. Australia’s Waterfowl. (Text by M.C. Downes and Ina Watson). Victoria: Fisheries & Wildlife.
• 1962. Bushland and Seashore. An Australian nature adventure. Melbourne: Lansdowne Press.
• 1967. Australian Birds. Melbourne: Thomas Nelson.
• 1968. Bush Quest. Melbourne: Lansdowne Press.
• 1970. The Corner. A naturalist's journeys in south-eastern Australia. Melbourne: Lansdowne Press.
• 1987. The Waterfowl of North America. Augusta, GA: Morris Communications Corporation.