Carl Fredrik Hill

[1] He is known for the atmospheric landscapes he painted during the first four years of his career, and for the drawings of fantastical scenes he created after he became mentally ill in his late twenties.

Born the son of a mathematics professor, Hill grew up in the university town of Lund in southern Sweden and had to strike out on his own as a landscape painter against his father's wishes.

After a severe psychotic attack in January 1878 and subsequent hospitalization, his career as a landscape painter came to an end at the age of 28.

"The prince of whispers ... where the world glows in a blood-red struggle" writes Gunnar Ekelöf in a poem to Hill.

Thanks to the Swedish collector Rolf de Maré (1888–1964), Hill's work become known in connection with the French avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1949, a hundred years after Hill's birth, a travelling exhibition was shown in London, Lucerne, Basel, Geneva and Hamburg.

The exhibition was a success, and in 1952 the Institut Tessin in Paris published a book about Hill with an introduction by Jacques Lassaigne.