Tristram Hillier (1905-1983) - Surrealist Precision

Tristram Hillier
A Rose
ca. 1944
oil on panel
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Tristram Hillier
Fossils (February)
1955
oil on canvas
Government Art Collection, London

Tristram Hillier
The Green Bottle
1950
oil on canvas
Southampton City Art Gallery

Tristram Hillier
Composition 1933 (Interior)
1933
oil on panel
Tate Modern, London

Tristram Hillier
Portuguese Farmhouse
1960
oil on canvas
Southampton City Art Gallery

Tristram Hillier
Variation on the Form of an Anchor
1939
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

"Tristram Hillier was born in China, but his family returned to England soon after his birth. He studied at Cambridge University for two years and was subsequently apprenticed to a firm of chartered accountants. However, this career was quickly abandoned when he decided to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1926. Until 1940 Hillier spent a great deal of time in France, but retained strong links with London. In 1933 he joined the Modernist group Unit One led by Paul Nash, and thereafter developed a distinctive style combining precision of handling with a Surrealist-inspired stillness of atmosphere." 

– adapted from biographical notes at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

Tristram Hillier
Une ferme abandonnée en Mayenne
1981
oil on canvas
Ingram Collection, London

Tristram Hillier
Flooded Meadow
1949
tempera on canvas
Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, Wales

Tristram Hillier
January Landscape, Somerset
1962
oil on canvas
Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, Lancashire

Tristram Hillier
The Fountain and the Ruin, Alpedrinha
1960
oil on canvas
The Hepworth, Wakefield, Yorkshire

Tristram Hillier
Chapel of the Misericordia
1947
oil on canvas
Southampton City Art Gallery

Tristram Hillier
Mill
1957
oil on panel
Jerwood Collection, London

 

Tristram Hillier
La truite aux pommes vapeur
1934
oil on panel (miniature)
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, Sussex

Tristram Hillier
Marine
1934
oil on panel (miniature)
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, Sussex

Tristram Hillier
The Breakwater at Dieppe
1948
oil on panel
Leicestershire County Council Art Collection, Leicester