Rowland Hilder

Art Brokerage: Rowland Frederick Hilder British Artist: b. 1905-1993. Rowland Frederick Hilder was born in New York but moved with his family, as a young child, back to their homeland of Kent, England. He was a marine and landscape artist and book illustrator. He has been called 'the Turner of his generation', and according to the Dictionary of National Biography 'The description "Rowland Hilder country" (attached primarily to the weald of Kent) evokes a landscape as distinctive and personal as "Constable's country" along the Suffolk Stour." A working artist all his life, Rowland Hilder had a fervent ambition to be known as a marine artist when he left Goldsmiths College, London. However, through a chain of circumstances - learning to work plein-air during a bitterly cold winter, living in a freezing cottage with wife-to-be Edith (chaperoned by his mother), and culminating in a legal action over publishing rights - he became known as the pre-eminent exponent of English landscape in winter. An army Camouflage Officer during the war, he then became a mainstay of the Ministry of Information. At the end of the war, advertising guru George Rainbird was inspired to commission a series of landscapes for Whitbread that led in turn, to Rowland and Edith creating the hugely successful Shell posters together. His landscapes as the backdrop and her exquisitely detailed flowers in the foreground were a winning and enduring combination. Listings wanted by Art Brokerage.