PBA Galleries

1 pp. Receipt to Israel Hatch for 1 pound, ten shillings, in payment for “painting two sines”. 

Hill was one of the first Boston engravers to etch maps, landscapes and portraits for magazines and book publishers, his most important published work appearing in Captain Cook’s Voyages (1797), Lavater’s Essays on Physiognomy (1794), and Morse’s American Universal Geography (1796). Just starting out in 1789, he painted signs for Israel Hatch, Boston’s best-known tavern-keeper, proprietor of the White Horse Tavern, where he would entertain Washington, Monroe and Lafayette. Perhaps, the white stallion depicted on the Tavern’s prominent “large square sign projecting over the footway” was one of those mentioned in this document.