Henry Lockey Hill, London, c.1820

Description

A fine English violin by Henry Lockey Hill, after Stradivari, London circa 1810.

Labelled: None

The more I discover about Henry Lockey Hill (b.1774, d.1835) the clearer his reputation as one of the great experts of the early nineteenth century becomes. His son, William Ebsworth Hill founded the eponymous company W.E. Hill & Sons, but references in the Hill papers on English makers, and in Sandys & Forster’s History of the Violin constantly refer back to the knowledge of the Hills in this very early period both about Italian instruments and also about a serious connoisseurship of English work. Now and then we see significant early English instruments from the seventeenth century where a scroll or a bit of varnish work shows the hand of Henry Lockey Hill.

This instrument takes Stradivari’s long-pattern as it’s starting point and is an outstanding example copying a violin of the early 1690s period. Original examples by Stradivari had a slightly longer stop length (the distance from the top of the belly to the bridge position), and English makers copying long-pattern violins around this time used various methods to correct this. Matthew Hardie (who may well have copied precisely the same instrument) simply moved the soundholes upwards by a few milimetres and this characteristic follows through several generations of Edinburgh makers. Hill’s solution seems to have been to minaturise the soundholes, and by scaling them down bring the stop position into place. The result is extremely effective, but it has the downside of diminishing the remarkable extent to which this instrument successfulliy copies Stradivari’s work, although to most eyes this would probably go completely unnoticed. Whilst other instruments by Lockey Hill show the strong influence of Vincenzo Panormo, it is a slightly different proposition in this case because the instrument is such a fluent interpretation of Stradivari’s original work, but the capability to produce instruments at this level comes as a direct result of Panormo’s arrival.

Legends abound of the ability of the Betts workshop to produce copies that could fool the greatest experts of their day. Whilst I think that these are overstating the situation, or perhaps experts could be more easily fooled back in the early nineteenth century, this offers a realistic window into this very high level of copying in the early 1800s.

Certificate: Our certificate available upon purchase.

Condition notes: There are sensitive restorations to the varnish, and some repairs to the ribs. The violin is priced according to condition.

Literature: A similiar violin is illustrated in The British Violin (2001)