David Octavius Hill was born in 1802 in Perth. His father, abookseller and publisher, helped to re-establish Perth Academy and David waseducated there as were his brothers. When his older brother Alexander joinedthe publishers Blackwood's in Edinburgh, Hill went there to study at the Schoolof Design. He learned lithography and produced Sketches of Scenery inPerthshire which was published as an album of views. His landscape paintingswere shown in the Institution for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Scotland,and he was among the artists dissatisfied with the Institution who establisheda separate Scottish Academy in 1829 with the assistance of his close friendHenry Cockburn. A year later Hill took on unpaid secretarial duties. He soughtcommissions in book illustration, with four sketches being used to illustrateThe Glasgow and Garnkirk Railway Prospectus in 1832, and went on to provide illustrationsfor editions of Walter Scott and Robert Burns.

In the 1830s he is listed as living at 24 Queen Street, inEdinburgh's New Town.[3] In 1836 the Royal Scottish Academy began to pay him asalary as secretary, and with this security he married his fiancée AnnMacdonald the following year. After the birth of their daughter, CharlotteHill, Ann was invalided, and died on 5 October 1841, aged 36, and was buriedwith her family in Greyfriars Churchyard in Perth. Charlotte Hill went on tomarry the author Walter Scott Dalgleish LLD and is buried in Grange Cemetery.