Landscape and marine painter, mainly in watercolour, printmaker and illustrator. Born at Greatneck, Long Island, America, with British parents, Hilder was initially educated in Morristown, New Jersey. After settling in England, he studied illustration and printmaking at Goldsmiths’ College School of Art under Edmund Sullivan for three years in the 1920s. He was later to lecture at that College between the wars, also at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, Royal College of Art and Farnham School of Art. During World War II Hilder served in the Army, concerned with camouflage. He was involved in several fine art publication companies, was a pioneer silkscreen printmaker in Britain, did extensive advertising work, notably for Shell-Mex and BP and illustrated many books.
Read more
He was assisted in his Shell work by his wife Edith, originally Edith Blenkiron. Hilder’s book illustration commissions included Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. His own books Starting with Watercolour and Painting Landscapes in Watercolour and the two volumes Rowland Hilder’s England and Rowland Hilder Country presented his own pictures. Hilder achieved great popular success with his portrayal of the English countryside, notably Kent, with the characteristically delineated trees and oast-houses. He showed at RA, RI of which he was president 1964–74, RHA and NEAC. He had his first solo show at Fine Art Society in 1939, and there was a retrospective at Woodlands Art Gallery, 1985. Duncan Campbell Fine Art latterly handled his work. Hilder early on was a keen sailor, marine artist and illustrator of boys’ sea adventure stories. Although he lived in London he kept a coastguard’s cottage at Shell Ness, as a base for marine painting. His son also painted, under the name Anthony Flemming.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)