William Hilton (painter)

In 1800, Hilton was apprenticed to the engraver John Raphael Smith, and around the same time enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools.

[5] Hilton first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803, sending a Group of Banditti, and soon established a reputation for choice of subject and qualities of design and colour superior to the great mass of his contemporaries.

[4] In 1813, having exhibited "Miranda and Ferdinand with the Logs of Wood", he was elected as an associate of the Academy, and in 1820 as a full academician; his diploma-picture representing Ganymede.

In 1823, he produced "Christ crowned with Thorns", a large and important work regarded as his masterpiece, subsequently bought as the first purchase of the Chantrey Fund in 1878.

Close by a tablet bears the words: 'This font was presented to the Chapel Royal of the Savoy by Harriet De Wint, in place of a Monument previously erected to the memory of her brother William Hilton R.A. her husband Peter de Wint, and other members of her family, whose remains are interred in the adjoining cemetery.

[11] Some of his best-regarded pictures include "Angel releasing Peter from Prison" (life-size), painted in 1831, "Una with the Lion entering Corceca's Cave" (1832), the "Murder of the Innocents", his last exhibited work (1838), "Comus" and "Amphitrite".

The Tate Gallery now owns "Edith finding the Body of Harold" (1834), "Cupid Disarmed, Rebecca and Abraham's Servant" (1829), "Nature blowing Bubbles for her Children" (1821), and "Sir Calepine rescuing Serena" (from The Faerie Queene) (1831).