William Hilton

William Hilton (3 June 178630 December 1839) was a British portrait and history painter. He is also known as "William Hilton the Younger". Life and work William Hilton was born in the gatehouse of the Vicar's Court in The Close, Lincoln, England, a son of Mary and William Hilton (1752–1822). His father, a native of Newark, was a portrait painter and scenery painter for Mr and Mrs James Edward Miller and later Thomas Shaftoe Robertson's theatre companies. William was baptised at the church of St Mary le Wigford, Lincoln. William initially worked with his father. The company toured the Lincoln Theatre Circuit, and young William was encouraged by theatre proprietor Fanny Robertson to pursue a career as an artist. After he rose to become a Royal Academician he painted her. She retired to live near the Georgian Theatre (now Angles Theatre in Wisbech), and his painting of Fanny in the role of "Beatrice" was in 1866 in the nearby Wisbech Working Men's Institute. Although he is best known today for simple portraits of the poets John Keats and John Clare, he was successful in his lifetime with huge history paintings in the "Grand Manner", which have not benefited from the revival of interest in 19th-century British Academic art, and are unlikely to be on display in the museums that own them. In 1800, Hilton was apprenticed to the engraver John Raphael Smith, and around the same time enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools. Another apprentice from 1802 was Peter De Wint; they were inseparable friends and lived together in Broad Street, Golden Square. De Wint married William's only sister Harriett. De Wint visited Hilton's home in Up-Hill, Lincoln and painted many of his charming landscapes in the district. In Lincoln cathedral is a cenotaph erected by Mrs De Wint in memory of the two artists – De Wint her husband, and Hilton, her brother. 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. He made a tour in Italy with Thomas Phillips, the portraitist.