Carl Fredrik Hill

The ailing visionary.

Carl Fredrik Hill painted luminous French landscapes until he fell ill with schizophrenia in 1878. For the rest of his life he made thousands of charged, visionary drawings.

Carl Fredrik Hill was born in 1849 in Lund. His father was a professor of mathematics and a strict man who did not want his son to become an artist. Carl Fredrik was nevertheless eventually allowed to study at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. He left the Academy in protest and travelled to Paris in 1873.

In France he found his way. He was influenced by Corot and the Barbizon school and painted landscapes outdoors around Fontainebleau and along the Seine, including at Luzancy. His pictures became ever lighter and freer, with big skies, blossoming trees and river landscapes in a clear light. He wanted to conquer the Paris Salon but succeeded only in part. His setbacks and his father’s death in 1875 weighed on him.

In 1878 Hill fell ill with schizophrenia. He was treated first in hospital in Paris and then at the asylum in Uppsala. From 1883 he lived in Lund with his mother and sister, who looked after him for the rest of his life.

During the years of his illness he never stopped creating. He made thousands of drawings in chalk and pencil, often on any paper to hand. The subjects are fantastical landscapes, strange animals, cities, ruins and mythical figures, full of energy and peculiar details. The drawings were long seen merely as expressions of his illness, but they have great artistic power.

Hill died in Lund in 1911. After his death the drawings from his years of illness were discovered by younger artists, and they became a powerful inspiration for Swedish modernism. The Malmö Art Museum has a very large collection of his work. Today he is regarded as one of the most original Swedish artists of the 19th century.