Born the son of a mathematics professor, Carl Frederick Hill grew up in the narrowness of the university town of Lund in southern Sweden and had to strike out his career as a landscape painter against his father’s will. After studying at the Stockholm Royal Academy of Fine Arts, he went to France. In the summer of 1874 Carl Fredrik Hill travelled to the village of Barbizon south of Paris, a Mecca for artists worldwide. Both the Barbizon School and Camille Corot had a decisive influence on him.

Hill wrote: “I have become convinced that art has no other goal than the truth, le vrai. Not the tritely naturalistic, but the true heart." He sought his subjects at different sites in France, Monitigny, Champagne and Normandy.

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