Roger Hilton

Acquired directly from the artist
Private Collection 
Sale, Phillip's, London, 2nd June 1992, whence acquired by the present owner

There is a small old tear to the board along the lower edge in the lower right quadrant and some other inconsistencies to the edges of the board. The board is intentionally uneven. The paint surface is intentionally uneven and appears to be in good overall condition. Examination under ultra-violet light reveals scattered isolated spots of retouching to: the repaired tear in the lower right quadrant, one or two places in the upper right quadrant, two small spots along the lower left edge, to an old pinhole along the left edge in the upper left quadrant and to a small spot along the left edge in the lower left quadrant. Held under glass in a white rectilinear frame. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 5381 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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In his book Since 1950, Art and its Criticism, published last year, the late Charles Harrison described Hilton as 'the most convincing of England's modernist painters'. Trained at the Slade under Tonks and Schwabe and later in Paris, where Bissière was his principal teacher, Hilton moved away after 1952 from a version of Ecole de Paris tachiste abstraction that he had developed at the end of the 1940s to a severe but rich kind of painting which had an almost architectural presence that he himself called 'space-creating'.  These works, produced up to mid-1955, are at first sight entirely non-figurative. They are, in Norbert Lynton's words, 'glorious paintings, but not yet the unique Hilton'. The painter himself, always highly self-critical, wrote about them to his colleague Terry Frost, either in 1954 or 1955: 'I am tired of non-figuration.....I am going in future to introduce if possible a more markedly human element in my pictures.....I give prominence to space-creating forms but I shall make human attachments as I see fit.....' It is the paintings that Hilton made subsequently, in which he strove for 'a new kind of figuration, that is, one that is more true', and which are usually redolent of some kind of human presence or interaction, that are his greatest achievement.

The present work is an example of this 'new kind of figuration' and was almost certainly painted between 1956 and 1958. It has a number of similarities to other Hilton paintings of 1956, for example June 1956 (black, white and ochre) (Private Collection), or March 1956 (liver, black and white) (Private Collection) and October 1956 (brown, blue, black and white) (Southampton City Art Gallery). The suggestion of bodily presence and movement is strong in the present work; the masterly variety of the brushmarks and of the 'tubed' red lines produces a painting that manages to be at the same time both elegant and visceral.

In his book on Hilton (Tate Publishing, 2006) Chris Stephens makes the pertinent point that, as a painter, Hilton should be seen as 'semi-detached' from the post-1945 grouping of St Ives artists, with whom he spent increasing amounts of time from 1955. Nevertheless, as a character he fitted well with the 'glamour and turbulence' as his son Matthew describes it, of the world of the then young artists in the St Ives of the 50s and 60s. Hilton was never a stranger to turbulence. He was apt to remove examples of his work from gallery walls and make off with them if he thought the hanging was wrong, and one of the most famous images of him is a photo showing him apparently aiming a kick at his own prizewinning painting March 1963 (blue) (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) at the John Moores Exhibition in November 1963, where he had won first prize. The present painting is associated with a similar episode. Hilton had held on to the work until he sold it, circa 1970, to a friend and drinking partner in Penzance. Subsequently, late on in a drinking session at the friend`s house, the unframed picture resting on the mantelpiece, Hilton suddenly rushed at it, shouting "How dare you desecrate the memory of my mother". For future protection, the painting was later secured to the chipboard backing that it still retains.