George William Hill (1861 â 1934) was one of the Canada's foremost sculptors during the first half of the 20th century because of his numerous public memorials. He was elected in 1917 as a full member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
Hill was born in Shipton, Eastern Townships, Canada East, the son of marble cutter George Taylor Hill and his wife Eleanor A. Carty. He began to carve marble in his father's workshop and worked there for eight years and he became a chief sculptor then went to Paris in 1889 to study at the ÃÂcole nationale des beaux-arts with Alexandre Falguière,Jean Paul Laurens, Henri Chapu at the Académie Julian and Jean-Antoine Injalbert at the Académie Colarossi. He returned to Canada about 1894 and worked with the architects William Sutherland and Edward Maxwell. By 1897, was producing monuments. In 1902 he had won his first commission, the Strathcona and South African soldiers' memorial. Many commissions followed such as Sir George-ÃÂtienne Cartier (1912), marking the centenary of Cartier's birth.