Derelict Lead Mine
Hillier's artistic development fell into three phases: abstract pictures produced as a young man in Paris, followed by a long period of Surrealist painting, and, from 1938, much more representational work. The distinctive style which he evolved as a Surrealist permeated all his later work. In Derelict Lead Mine the deep shadows, the eerie forms of the trees, and the melancholy of the ruined, overgrown buildings and deserted landscape lend to the work the haunting quality of a dream or of an unpeopled wartime bomb site. There are old lead mines on the moors near Priddy in Somerset, which are presumably the subject of this painting. Hillier was a close friend and working partner of Edward Wadsworth (1889-1949). He was invalided out of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1944, the year this painting was purchased from him.
