Houses

Leaving school at sixteen to study stage and costume design, he gradually abandoned stage work in favour of painting. Derek Hill is perhaps best known as a portrait artist but was also, in the words of a friend and critic, a master of landscape. As a collector, Derek Hill's interests lay particularly in the work of those artists who inspired him as a painter, and in paintings which reflect an interest in his English, Irish, and Italian contemporaries, with a preference for small paintings of considerable intensity, a quality reflected in his own best work.