months' leaving salary. He was grateful to his employers for the consideration he had received during his many years of ill-health. A cottage was taken at Epping in the hills a few miles from Sydney, and during the next two years Hilder and his wife went through many anxieties. His sales were uncertain and his prices were low. Increasingly focused on his artwork, Hilder began to find more patronage and sales, and exhibited in Melbourne in 1914. Despite continued ill-health he painted throughout the remaining two years of his life, dying on 10 April 1916, at Hornsby, New South Wales, Australia. His elder son was sculptor Bim Hilder. His younger son was artist and author Brett Hilder, although Brett is better known as a Master Mariner. Legacy Hilder was modest, shy and affected by illness; this sometimes led to estrangement from his best friends. He was fortunate in his wife, in the admiration of his fellow artists, and in finding early buyers of his paintings. He was very critical of his own work and tore up much of it; sometimes the final result was the third or fourth effort to capture the subject. He was not afraid of empty spaces and everything in the drawing was beautifully placed. His colour was always excellent, though some of his later work is painted almost in monochrome washed in on very rough paper. The treatment generally is broad, yet full of refinement and poetical feeling. The best collection of his work will be found at the national gallery at Sydney. He is also represented at the Melbourne, Adelaide and other galleries. The Ewing collection at the University of Melbourne has a good example, "The Island Trader". Ure Smith published a tribute, J. J. Hilder: Watercolourist (1916), with proceeds going to Hilder's widow. Publications J. J. (Jesse Jewhurst) Hilder, J.J. Hilder: water-colourist (Sydney: Tyrrells, 1916) Sydney Ure Smith and Bertram Stevens (eds.), The art of J.J. Hilder (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1918) J. J. (Jesse Jewhurst) Hilder, Jesse Jewhurst Hilder: anniversary exhibition, 1966 (Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery, 1960) Notes References External links 1881 births 1916 deaths Australian watercolourists 20th-century Australian painters Julian Ashton Art School alumni