Rowland Hilder was born on 28 June 1905 at Great Neck, Long Island, USA. His parents Roland Hilder and Kate Mildred Fissenden were of Kentish stock and in domestic service. As a child, Rowland frequently crossed the Atlantic to stay with his grandparents at Birling in Kent. The family returned to England in 1915.  At the age of 16, Hilder enrolled at Goldsmiths’ College, at New Cross in south London, where the noted illustrator Edmund J Sullivan tutored him. By the age of 18, Hilder was submitting work to be shown at the Royal Academy. At Goldsmiths’ Hilder met his wife Edith, with whom he later collaborated on many flower and landscape works. Watercolour was his favourite medium and he excelled at painting detailed images of trees, farmhouses and Kentish landscapes. As a result of Hilder’s two lifelong loves, the Thames and Shoreham Valleys the description ‘Rowland Hilder country’ came into use, referring primarily to the Weald of Kent. Hilder lived at Blackheath for most of his life, in the days when it was still a Kentish country village, and frequently stayed for extended periods with his grandparents at Birling. Hilder produced many front covers for The Autocar magazine from 1929 onwards. He also produced adverts for Goodyear tyres in the 1930s and Shell posters and guides in the 1950s. He painted in both oils and watercolour and illustrated numerous books, including Moby Dick, Treasure Island and Mary Webb’s Precious Bane. Hilder was elected a Member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours in 1935. His first one-man exhibition had been held at the Fine Art Society in Bond Street, London in 1939. Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, an ambitious scheme was established to employ artists on the home front. The result was a collection of more than 1,500 watercolours and drawings that make up a fascinating record of British lives and landscapes at a time of imminent change. Recording Britain was the brainchild of Sir Kenneth Clark, who saw it as an extension of the Official War Artist scheme. By choosing watercolour painting as the medium of record, he hoped that the scheme would also help to preserve that characteristic English art form. With money from the Pilgrim Trust (a fund provided by American millionaire Edward Harkness) the scheme’s administrators commissioned some of the country’s finest watercolour painters, including William Russell Flint, Charles Knight, John Piper and Hilder. Other younger artists – some fresh out of art school (such as Phyllis Dimond) – were invited to submit pictures and were paid a small fee for each work accepted. Though the scheme was called ‘Recording Britain’, that title is inaccurate. In fact Northern Ireland and Scotland were not included, and Wales was represented by less than 80 pictures. Nevertheless, the surviving watercolours and drawings are a uniquely fascinating record of their time. They were widely exhibited during the war years, and in 1949 the Pilgrim Trust gave them to the V&A. For many years they were on loan around the country, but in recognition of the significance of the collection as a whole, the pictures were recalled in 1990 and most can now be seen on request in the V&A’s Prints and Drawings Study Room. As a result of the work Hilder produced for the London and North Eastern Railway Company (LNER) in the inter-war years, he was commissioned by Edwin Embelton to work for the Ministry of Information during the war. He then went on to become a much-admired lecturer at Goldsmiths’, later being awarded a professorship. He also lectured at the Art Workers’ Guild, The Slade, The Royal School and The Central School. Known as ‘the Turner of his generation’, in 1964 he became President of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours. He wrote the best-selling book Starting in Watercolours which has since been translated into many languages. He also wrote the books Rowland Hilder’s England and Rowland Hilder Country: An Artist’s Memoir. He was appointed OBE in 1986. Sir Hugh Casson, Former President of the RA described his style and technique as ‘so recognisable that there are parts of England which, in tribute to his skill, seem to have grown physically like his paintings.’ Hilder died of heart failure in Greenwich District Hospital on 21 April 1993, at the age of 88. After his death, the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours honoured him by instituting an annual Rowland Hilder Award in his memory.