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Caroline Emily Gray Hill

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lady Caroline Emily Gray Hill
Born14 August 1843
Died1924
NationalityBritish
PartnerJohn Edward Gray Hill

Caroline Emily Gray Hill (14 August 1843 – 1924) was a British artist and photographer.[1]

Biography

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Caroline Emily Gray Hill was born in Tottenham, the daughter of George Drake Hardy in 1843. She married the solicitor Sir John Edward Gray Hill. In 1888 they took their first trip, of many decades of travel, to the Holy Land. The couple lived on Mount Scopus, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and Mere Hall in Birkenhead near Liverpool. They had no children. Hill died in 1924. Some of her works and papers are in the University of Liverpool archives.[2][3][4][5]

Art career

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Hill's art was focused on the desert and she also took photographs which were used to illustrate the travel book, With the Beduins (1891), written by her husband.[6][2][7][8]

In 1903 Hill wrote an article A Journey by the Way of the Philistines for The Windsor Magazine, detailing a route she had travelled both alone and with her husband. It began in El Qantara, Egypt and through Arish and the Gaza Strip, to Bethlehem. Again her photos and paintings were used for illustration.[2][9]

Her work was displayed in a solo retrospective exhibition "The Lady and the Desert" at Ticho House in 2002. In Jerusalem's St George church there is a plaque to her memory.[2]

Legacy

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In 1914, Arthur Ruppin, head of the Palestine Office of the World Zionist Organization purchased the estate of Sir John Gray Hill for the purpose of building a university. As Ruppin wrote in his diary: “Today I succeeded in buying from Sir John Gray Hill his large and magnificently situated property on Mount Scopus, thus acquiring the first piece of ground for the Jewish university in Jerusalem.” [10]

References

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  1. ^ Wright, Christopher; Gordon, Catherine May (January 2006). British and Irish Paintings in Public Collections: An Index of British and Irish Oil Paintings by Artists Born Before 1870 in Public and Institutional Collections in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-11730-1.
  2. ^ a b c d "Gray Hill landscapes lend color to Ticho House show". Haaretz.com.
  3. ^ "OTAGO WITNESS, ISSUE 2743, 10 OCTOBER 1906, PAGE 79". paperspast.natlib.govt.nz.
  4. ^ "P4/1/19 - Lady Gray Hill's pictures". sca-archives.liverpool.ac.uk.
  5. ^ Dolev, Diana (8 March 2016). The Planning and Building of the Hebrew University, 1919–1948: Facing the Temple Mount. Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-7391-9162-0.
  6. ^ "Notes and News". Palestine Exploration Quarterly. 56 (2): 49–56. 19 July 2013. doi:10.1179/peq.1924.56.2.49.
  7. ^ Walford, Edward (January 1860). The county families of the United Kingdom; or, Royal manual of the titled and untitled aristocracy of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Dalcassian Publishing Company.
  8. ^ Hill, Gray (1891). With the Beduins: A Narrative of Journeys and Adventures in Unfrequented Parts of Syria. T. F. Unwin.
  9. ^ "Journeys of a Victorian lady at the VG&M - University of Liverpool News". News. 5 July 2011.
  10. ^ Arthur Ruppin purchases land for Hebrew University
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