Robert Hills

Date of birth: 1769 — Date of death: 1844

Hills studied at the Royal Academy Schools from 1788, having first received lessons in drawing from J.A. Gresse (1741-1794), and he began exhibiting at the Academy in 1791. He became best known for his watercolours and drawings of animals, and he was also a prolific etcher of such subjects, as the large number of prints which he made between 1798 and 1815 demonstrate. He was a founder member in 1804 of the important exhibiting society known as The Old Society of Painters in Watercolour or Old Water-Colour Society (OWS), and became its first secretary.