Mabel Hill (1872-1956) was part of a group of Wellington painters who travelled to Sydney in 1897. It is likely that the leading impressionist, Tom Roberts, encouraged her paintings of characteristic New Zealand landscape defined by sunlight. Hill was an art teacher at Wellington Technical School until her marriage in 1898. Like the feminist artist, Marie Bashkirtseff, she was a precocious and talented painter who met with early success. Her stated fear that she would be ‘lionized’ on a visit to Dunedin in 1895 prompted Frances Hodgkins to ‘not trouble her’, although Hodgkins later came to respect Hill.