Cirrus@Austlit

Samuel Prout Hill was a painter, lecturer, poet and public servant and a cousin of the artist John Skinner Prout. When he arrived in Australia, he was first employed as an accountant, but he spent his leisure time at the Mechanics' School of Arts in New South Wales as a lecturer, secretary and librarian, and started writing and painting. During this time, Hill made 'more of a reputation as a man of letters than of business' (Oxford Companion to Australian Literature), publishing numerous poems in newspapers and magazines.

In 1848, Hill resigned from the School of Arts after a scandal and moved to Hobart, where he worked as a draughtsman and later clerk in the Survey Department. He worked there periodically between 1849 to 1853, exhibiting his paintings locally, and marrying Louisa Odell in April 1849. He later was employed as a theatre decorator in the re-decoration of the Theatre Royal, Hobart, and he also acted there.

In the late 1850s he was giving art lessons and painting landscapes on commission. He also wrote regularly for the Hobart Mercury, and he won a seat in the Tasmanian House of Assembly in 1861, but was assaulted with a walking stick by a Captain Davies and died from the injuries he sustained before he could begin his political term.