Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1905 (Heft 11))

DAVID OCTAVIUS HILL, R.S.A.—1802-1870.
THE FACULTY of imitation is inherent in human nature, and up to
a certain point is one of the most important factors in our intellectual
development, but when one has passed the period of primary education and
begun to attack his life-work he must subdue the tendency to follow the easy
path of redoing what others have done, and work directly from his own
self-consciousness if he is to attain any distinction.
He is indeed a fortunate man who, endowed with talent and courage,
finds himself at work in a field where there are no precedents and who must
simply follow the guidance of his own instincts. Art-work produced in
such circumstances is generally fine and always interesting, as witness the
beautiful forms created by the primeval potters, the frescos of Fra Angelico,
or the paintings of the Van Eycks.
Such productions are evolved as unconsciously and as directly from
nature as are the trees and flowers, and constitute a pure product; but soon
there come imitators who, incompletely comprehending the work of the
master, produce something resembling it in its more obvious features but
lacking the subtler qualities, with the result that in course of time the pure
art disappears and certain conventions and mannerisms are accepted in its
place. This is true in the realm of photography also, and is strikingly ex-
emplified in the work of the subject of this paper, David Octavius Hill,
R.S.A., who, sixty years ago, produced photographic portraits which have
charmed and delighted artists of every school who have had the fortune to
become acquainted with them.
To present-day pictorial photographers it is extremely interesting and
almost humiliating to observe that on the very threshold of the photographic
era there was one doing with no apparent effort what they would fain accom-
plish with eager strivings, and thinking so little of his achievements that
when he returned to what he considered his serious work it was with a sense
of having frittered away three solid years in following a most fascinating
amusement.
D. O. Hill, as he was familiarly termed by his friends, was a painter of
considerable repute in Scotland in the earlier part of last century. Born in
Perth in 1802 he soon showed an aptitude for art and was fortunate in having
a father who encouraged him in its pursuit and sent him to Edinburgh to
study in the Trustees Academy. He began to exhibit in 1823, and six years
later his work was considered of sufficient merit to entitle him to full
membership of the Royal Scottish Academy. During the following year he
was appointed secretary to that institution and for forty years he devoted his
energies and much of his time to the furtherance of its interests. In his
early days he painted subjects illustrative of Scottish life and character, but for
the greater part of his life he devoted himself to landscape-painting. Many
of his pictures were engraved, and such an able critic as P. G. Hamerton
had many appreciative things to say of his art; but " the good men do is oft
interred with their bones,” and had Hill only painted pictures his memory