The Artist;
with Arthur Tooth and Sons, London, where acquired by the Beaverbrook family in 1965
Exhibition History:
London, Arthur Tooth and Sons, The Crucifixion and Other Recent Paintings by Tristram Hillier, 12 October – 6 November 1954 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, no.1);
London, Redfern Gallery, The Christian Vision, 1958;
Worthing, Worthing Art Gallery, Tristram Hillier A.R.A.: A Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings, 10 September – 8 October 1960 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, no. 45);
Fredericton, The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Sargent to Freud: Modern British Paintings and Drawings in the Beaverbrook Collection, 24 May – 13 September 1998 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, no. 14, p. 19);
Fredericton, The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Art in Dispute, 1 July 2005 – 5 March 2006;
Woking, The Lightbox, The Ingram Collection: Dreams and Nightmares, 22 May – 15 July 2012;
Somerset, Hestercombe Gallery, A Personal Passion, 25 April – 5 July 2015;
Woking, The Lightbox, The Ingram Collection: Where’s God Now? 18 July – 27 September 2015;
Hastings, Jerwood Gallery, Century: 100 Modern British Artists, 23 October 2016 – 8 January 2017;
London, Mall Galleries, The Art of Collecting, 27 June – 6 July 2018;
Hull, Ferens Art Gallery, Reflection: British Art in an Age of Change, 17 August 2019 – 5 January 2020
Literature:
Jenny Perry, Painter Pilgrim: The Art and Life of Tristram Hillier, Royal Academy of Arts Publications, London 2008 (illustrated, p. 118-122)
Hillier is best known as a painter of haunting landscapes and street scenes in which abandoned clothing and tools suggest a vanished human presence. In his masterly Crucifixion, this disappearing act is made more explicit, since we can see both the abandoned gear and the crowd wandering away in the distance. Otherwise, the painting is in many ways traditional. This is the quiet moment between the crucifixion of Christ and the taking down of His body, when the world’s attention has moved away – note the distant city – leaving only Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary to lament their loss.
