cover
1 Across Penwith oil on canvas 61 x 81 cms 24 x 32 ins
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2 Woman oil on canvas 46 x 61 cms 18 x 24 ins
3 Blue Still Life oil on canvas 76 x 76 cms 30 x 30 ins
2018
www.messums.com 28 Cork Street, London W1S 3NG Telephone: +44 (0)20 7437 5545
4 Apollo oil on canvas 123 x 183 cms 481â „4 x 72 ins
Rose Hilton What happens when two artists set up home together? Since the late 19th century, when British art schools began admitting women in ever larger numbers, artist couples have become increasingly common. Of course we all tend to gravitate towards people who share our interests and concerns, but when two artists marry or live together the effects can be far-reaching, and when I was asked by the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol to propose an exhibition I suggested this as a theme. They responded positively, and I began putting together a group of couples. The names of Roger and Rose Hilton came up early on, but while I admired Roger’s work for its austere power, Rose’s paintings were less familiar. Discovering an artist is one of life’s great pleasures, and when the artist is someone like Rose Hilton the pleasure is doubled. Visiting Cork Street to look at some paintings I immediately fell under her spell. The colours were gorgeous but never overwhelming. There was a lightness Photograph © Antony Crolla to the work but it was far from superficial. Certain pictures and details of pictures stayed in my mind. They had that elusive quality shared by good paintings, a kind of inner necessity. They showed strength of character as Roger’s did, only the character was quite different. As is made clear by Sandy Mallet in the essay that follows, Rose is a strong woman who has retained her natural warmth and love of life in spite of considerable hardship. Marriage to Roger was difficult, but she is generous in her recollections of him. While Roger undoubtedly held her back, not least by occupying so much of her time and attention, he also gave her valuable advice on the use of colour and tone, lessons he had learnt himself in Paris before World War Two. He also insisted that she strive to be herself in her work, and this she has done ever since. Yes, she is inspired by other artists and often finds solutions to creative problems in exhibitions and books, but these influences are worked into compositions that are unmistakeably hers. Look, for example, at ‘Self Portrait with Model’ (plate 25), one of three works Messum’s are kindly lending to the RWA exhibition this summer. At first, perhaps, we become immersed in warmth and colour. We are lured in, charmed. Then perhaps we step back, note the influence of Matisse and think we have ‘placed’ Rose Hilton as a decorative painter. We move on, only to be pulled back. There is something in the play of angles that holds the attention, a rigour that balances the charm. Yes, the painting is decorative but it is not simple. On 12 January 1983 Rose wrote in her diary: ‘I have always tried to hide my own efforts and wished my works to have the lightness and joyousness of a springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labours it has cost.’ She was quoting Matisse back then. Today she might say the same thing herself. James Russell Art historian and curator
5 Artist’s Model oil on canvas 41 x 39 cms 16 x 151⁄2 ins
Introduction One vigorous line of art historical thought pursued a few years ago sought to view the work of women artists as a fundamental response to the suffering and restrictions they had experienced, whether thrown at them by circumstance or by oppressive men. While it’s an idea potentially relevant to artists such as Frida Kahlo and Tracey Emin, whose art is often autobiographical and has trauma to relay, the same approach feels less appropriate for Gillian Ayres say, or Helen Frankenthaler, whose inspirations appear less self-focused. It is a notion, though, that hovers in the background of Rose Hilton’s work, initially at least because one is aware of a level of suffering and subjection that has threaded through parts of her life – whether in the form of serious illness (she had TB while at art college), or her looking after a famously cantankerous (and famous) husband, or he actually demanding she shouldn’t paint – she has too often been seen or referred to in these terms. And yet the notion is ultimately invalid: the true Rose Hilton, not only the person one meets and talks delightedly with, but also the spirit that emanates from her art, seems not at all sculpted by the experience of suffering. Quite the reverse, as hers is, and as seems always to have been, a generous, open-hearted world, whatever the slings and arrows that have sometimes rained down. It is a world full
of colour and warmth, of sensuality and light, of the human form and womanliness. In fact, if the trials of her life have honed her and her art in any way, one suspects it has actually reinforced a set of heartening values, fuelling what has proved to be a remarkable and long-developed resilience. Rose Hilton has carried her art, her voice, her seductive outpouring of light and form now into her 80s, where she still delights in working regularly, testing herself, exploring possibilities, and creating pleasure through beauty. It was this well-spring of work – one that she started fully exploring after the death of Roger Hilton in 1975 – that David Messum first came across in 1987, when visiting Cornwall from London. It was an extraordinary discovery for both of them, fortuitous, gratifying, which initially resulted in the first of Rose’s shows at Messum’s in 1989. This event marked the start of a succession of what has now been over a dozen highly successful London solo exhibitions, as well as a watershed retrospective show at Tate St Ives in 2008. The 1989 show also marked the beginning of a long journey towards proper recognition, an understanding not only of the true worth of her work, the shimmering powers she is able to conjure up, but also of her being able to establish herself fully beyond the shadow of Roger Hilton, who – because of his undoubted fame as a towering figure of post-war British abstraction – tended to have been so dominant in the minds of those looking at what Rose was doing. This gradual journey of discovery of an artist’s work and worth, the building of recognition and reputation – even over such a lengthy period – must be amongst the most satisfying and enjoyable tasks that a gallery can be involved in. It is serious stuff, getting the world to appreciate and acknowledge what you have discovered about an artist, to encourage a level of understanding about an artist that evolves into common agreement. It is also deeply fascinating because of just what it is you learn about the artist as the relationship between artist and gallery deepens. Rose Hilton’s story, particularly, is a remarkable one, as, from those years she has worked as an artist, she has
6 Studio Model and Artist oil on canvas 76 x 61 cms 30 x 24 ins
herself played a part in some of the most exciting and most venerated phases of post-war British art. Just recently she has been approached increasingly by curators as being the last of a famous generation of St Ives artists still working, still alive. But that is only a slice of it. It’s a story that starts with her joining the Royal College of Art in 1953, and being launched into an art scene that was becoming fast-changing in its response to new postwar ideas and art movements from the continent and America. In her same year at the RCA were names like Peter Blake, Pauline Boty, Brian Fielding, Sonia Lawson and Ken Howard. Rose’s tutor at the RCA, Carel Weight, had set up the renowned Young Contemporaries annual exhibitions, which is where artists like Robyn Denny, Derek Boshier and Richard Smith showed their ground-breaking work, these exhibitions also attracting people like David Hockney and Frank Auerbach. Rose too exhibited at the Young Contemporaries show, and while her work followed more figurative lines (with early praise and prizes) she was fascinated by the adventure of more radical students. Brian Fielding, the abstract painter, became a particular friend, and when she graduated in 1957 she collected her degree with the revolutionary Richard Smith. The RCA in the mid-50s was a vibrant hub of new ideas and strutting characters, questioning the edges of what art might do; Rose’s participation involved her in new different languages of art, and important and exhilarating companions. Out into the London scene of the late ’50s, she took on a flat on the Fulham Road producing work that won her a scholarship to Italy for a year. Wanting to sub-let her flat, she put a note in the RCA, which was seen by Robyn Denny, who told his friend Sandra Blow, herself just back from Italy, living with the artist Alberto Burri. Sandra Blow came to see the flat two days in a row, first with Roger Hilton, then with Bryan Wynter, both artists by then of considerable note. This was Rose’s first meeting with Roger. It’s an episode that bore much fruit. Sandra Blow, glamorous and successful, took the flat, and became a life-long friend. Roger – after Rose returned from Rome – began to see her (20 years his junior) and in the summer
of 1959 asked her to his cottage in Georgia, to the west of St Ives, where they spent an idyllic two weeks, before Rose took up a teaching post at Sidcup Art School (where one of her pupils was Keith Richards). Rose and Roger began to be seen around town, Rose being immersed in an art scene that took her Rose on the roof of her Fulham Road from Keith Vaughan to flat in 1958 Francis Bacon, and from London to Cornwall, finding herself with people and ideas of prime importance and interest. After hiccoughs, estrangements, the birth of their son Bo, and settling down in a Cathcart Road London flat, they found a good period, Roger producing some of his best work at the studio in St John’s Wood, with Rose looking after Bo and (surreptitiously) using a bedroom space for her own work. There were extensive journeys to France, with visits to galleries and artists’ studios, Rose being introduced to such powerful artistic figures as Pierre Soulages. Most of all there were trips to Cornwall, where a group of abstract artists had been forming around St Ives since the late 1950s, including the friends who Rose and Roger most centred on, Peter Lanyon, Bryan Wynter, John Wells and Patrick Heron. Cornwall seems to have acted like a golden thread through the history of Modern British art. It was the crucible for that legendary moment of Modernism when Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood met with the selftaught painter Alfred Wallis in St Ives in 1928. Even forty years earlier, artists had begun coming to Cornwall, to the Penwith peninsula, British artists who had spent time in France, like Stanhope Forbes and Harold Harvey, exponents of the Newlyn School. In the post-war period, the movement that Rose Hilton had such an intimate
7 Artist and Model oil on canvas 71 x 92 cms 28 x 36 ins
Roger and Rose, 1970
knowledge of and relationship with, was an historic exploration of abstraction, that grew from the 50s into the 60s, and those artists’ names – Lanyon, Wynter, Wells, Heron, Hilton – have since become totemic, a band of wizards from one of the truly great eras of British art. In 1965 Rose and Roger got married, their second son Fergus was born, and they moved to Botallack, in the far west of Cornwall. As they became more closely woven into the artistic community there, with other local visitors including Terry Frost and Karl Weschke, it provided a profound backdrop for Rose to develop ideas about painting, to see arguments develop and flare, to experience the extent to which some artists stretched ideas and their own commitment – this was a community that has become renowned for tackling art with a radical spirit. After Roger Hilton’s death, Rose began to revive herself as an artist. She had worked sporadically when with Roger (late on, she painted in the room while he lay ill in bed), sometimes she had had to work in secret (as in their Cathcart Road days). Picking up those strands, and re-approaching her art in the mid-’70s, was as much an exercise in defining her own individuality as it was about evolving a painterly direction – sieving the kaleidoscope of ideas and experiences she had been part of over the past years, as well as trusting again inner instincts and tastes.
She was drawn to looking at French art, and to Matisse in particular. In 1983 she flew to Russia for two weeks especially to visit the Hermitage and see the Matisses in the State collection. The next year she was particularly struck by a Raoul Dufy exhibition at the Hayward, and the 1988 Miro show at the Whitechapel deeply impressed. All the time her work was evolving and glorying in a rich developing palette. In the autumn of 1984 she took a decision to enrol in Cecil Collins’ drawing class at the Central School of Art, and found it utterly compelling, helping to free her from an overly-academic approach. By the time of the first Messum’s exhibition in 1989, the new journey was well underway, and not only was Rose Hilton’s freedom and individuality assured, but the work was beginning to exert an entrancing power, to display gifts of colour, light and passion that were to attract increasing numbers of devotees to the gallery. In the years following that landmark show, through the history of those many further exhibitions at Messum’s, the work has evolved in scope and subject matter, with journeys from figuration to abstraction, from small cabinet pictures to vast landscape works. An important change was her move to a new studio in Newlyn in 2008, (to John Wells’s old studio), which allowed for works on a greater scale, though recently she has been working often from the conservatory at home. The range of her work is absorbing; throughout it common themes are strong, themes of light and colour and sensuality – open-heartedness even, a great warmth of spirit. This is where she achieves unusual strength, delivering something of the human condition, something not easily definable, but beautifully welcome, inquisitive, touched with a balmy passion, and creating an experience that fosters an inner joy. A perfect response to any suffering. What is abundantly clear is that here is an extraordinary artist, one whose qualities and stature must now be firmly recognised as being on an equal footing with those hallowed names she worked and lived alongside in her earlier years. Sandy Mallet Author and art historian
8 Studio Hilton oil on canvas 102 x 127 cms 401â „8 x 50 ins
9 The Red Room oil on canvas 92 x 122 cms 36 x 48 ins
10 Abstract Figure oil on canvas 61 x 51 cms 24 x 20 ins
11 Red Still Life oil on canvas 76 x 51 cms 30 x 20 ins
12 Before Eden oil on canvas 91 x 122 cms 357⁄8 x 477⁄8 ins
13 Cornish Coast oil on canvas 51 x 76 cms 20 x 30 ins
14 Siesta oil on canvas 61 x 51 cms 24 x 20 ins
15 Botallack Landscape oil on canvas 76 x 76 cms 30 x 30 ins
16 Homage to Braque oil on canvas 71 x 92 cms 28 x 36 ins
17 The Harbour oil on canvas 76 x 76 cms 30 x 30 ins
18 Spring Interior oil on canvas 91 x 122 cms 357â „8 x 48 ins
19 Beach I oil on canvas 46 x 61 cms 18 x 24 ins
20 Beach II oil on canvas 46 x 61 cms 18 x 24 ins
21 Two Figures oil on canvas 102 x 76 cms 40 x 30 ins
22 Newlyn oil on canvas 51 x 76 cms 201â „8 x 30 ins
23 Bathers, Rock Pool Series, Botallack III oil on canvas 76 x 76 cms 30 x 30 ins
24 Kenidjack oil on canvas 122 x 183 cms 48 x 72 ins
25
Self Portrait with Model* oil on canvas 72 x 92 cms 281â „8 x 36 ins
26
Zelah*
oil on canvas 76 x 76 cms 30 x 30 ins
27 Portrait of Lady in Black oil on canvas board 25 x 18 cms 10 x 6 7â „8 ins
28 Night Thoughts oil on canvassed board 51 x 41 cms 20 x 16 ins
29
Conservatory Painting (1)* oil on canvas 76 x 76 cms 30 x 30 ins
30 Adrianne oil on canvas 76 x 76 cms 30 x 30 ins
31 Looking Towards the Lizard Peninsula oil on canvas 91 x 122 cms 36 x 48 ins
32 Figures oil on canvas 82 x 41 cms 321⁄8 x 161⁄8 ins
33 Austere Landscape the Cape oil on canvas 76 x 76 cms 30 x 30 ins
34 Botallack Figure oil on canvas 61 x 46 cms 241⁄8 x 181⁄8 ins
35 Studio Corner oil on canvas 77 x 61 cms 301â „8 x 24 ins
36 Bath Series III oil on canvas 76 x 76 cms 30 x 30 ins
37 Bath Series IV oil on board 79 x 78 cms 31 x 301â „2 ins
38 Harbour Painting oil on canvas 92 x 92 cms 36 x 36 ins
39 Reflection oil on canvas 76 x 60 cms 297⁄8 x 235⁄8 ins
40 Into the Night oil on canvas 51 x 61 cms 20 x 24 ins
41 Conservatory Painting II oil on canvas 76 x 76 cms 297⁄8 x 297⁄8 ins
42 Figures and Plants oil on canvas 92 x 92 cms 36 x 36 ins
43 Reflections oil on board 51 x 38 cms 20 x 143â „4 ins
44 Lucy oil on canvas 76 x 51 cms 30 x 20 ins
45 Estuary (Girl and Dog) oil on canvas 71 x 92 cms 28 x 36 ins
46 Red Room oil on canvas 76 x 76 cms 30 x 30 ins
47 Penwith oil on canvas 76 x 76 cms 30 x 30 ins
48 Winter Landscape in Choc au lait oil on canvas 31 x 26 cms 12 x 10 ins
49 Mousehole oil on canvas 46 x 56 cms 18 x 22 ins
50 The Quarrel oil on canvas 51 x 76 cms 20 x 30 ins
51 Lovers oil on canvas 71 x 91 cms 28 x 36 ins
“
Her pictures are exquisitely beautiful. They
show a finely tuned sense of tone, colour and
The New Book
by
form and also a wonderful empathy with the
Ian Collins
sitter and a sense of the figure’s sensuality. Senior Tate curator Chris Stephens
”
Rose Hilton is a free spirit in art and life. Founded in figuration, her beautiful pictures have moved in recent decades towards lyrical abstraction. Now in her eighties, she is painting better than ever. Rose Phipps was a prize-winning student when she met the abstract artist Roger Hilton. During their 16 tumultuous years together, Rose abandoned her career to support Roger and raise a family. The figure dancing into Hilton’s later art was hers. Her sensitive and sensual paintings reflect the light of Cornwall. Today she is counted among Britain’s leading colourists and hailed as a matchless maker of joyful pictures. In this image-packed book, Ian Collins tells a fascinating and uplifting story. With added commentaries on her own pictures, and memories of many friendships, Rose Hilton offers unique insight into the art of life.
“
FINE ART PUBLICATIONS
Rose obeys the poet Wallace Stevens’s dictum that art must
give pleasure. Her paintings combine grandeur with gaiety. Former Arts Minister Lord Gowrie
£35
”
Ian Collins has written monographs on John Craxton, James Dodds, John McLean and Guy Taplin, and curated exhibitions from the Benaki Museum in Greece to the Yale Center for British Art in the United States. His show ‘Masterpieces: Art and East Anglia’ earned the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich a nomination as the UK’s Museum of the Year 2014.
Rose Hilton by Ian Collins 245 x 290 mm, 208 pages printed in full colour with over 200 illustrations. www.lundhumphries.com ISBN: 978-1-84822-206-9 www.messums.com
Born in Kent, Rose Hilton attended Beckenham Art School before going on to the Royal College of Art where she won the Life Drawing and Painting Prize as well as the Abbey Minor Scholarship to Rome. On her return to London she started teaching as well as showing with the Young Contemporaries. It was during this period that she met and married the artist Roger Hilton – and for the next decade she supported him through failing health and a flourishing career, also raising two sons. There was little time to pursue her own career as a painter during this time. Exhibiting regularly at Messum’s since 1990, Rose Hilton has steadily built a reputation as a major St. Ives artist and a singular painter of sensuous and exquisite images. 1931 1949-53 1953-57 1958-59 1956 1959 1959 1960 1961/1965 From 1961 1975 1977 1978 1987 1988 1989 1991 1993 1994 1995 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2002 2002 2004 2008
2009
2011 2012 2014 2014 2016 2018
Born Rose Phipps Beckenham Art School Royal College of Art Abbey Minor Scholarship, Rome Young Contemporaries Exhibition at the RBA Suffolk Street, London Contemporary Women Painters: Whitechapel Gallery, London Met fellow artist Roger Hilton (1911-1975) Set-up with Roger Hilton and later married him Birth of sons Regular exhibitions with Penwith and Newlyn Society of Artists Roger Hilton dies Newlyn Gallery, first solo show Plymouth Art Centre, solo show Newlyn Art Gallery, solo show The Oxford Gallery, solo show Joins David Messum David Messum Gallery, W1, solo show David Messum Gallery, W1, solo show Three Painters of Penwith, Messum’s, Cork Street, W1 Messum’s, Cork Street, W1, solo show Messum’s, Cork Street, W1, solo show Messum’s, Cork Street, W1, solo show Messum’s, Cork Street, W1, solo show Twelve New Paintings, Messum’s, Cork Street, W1 Painters and Sculptors of the South West, Messum’s, Cork Street, W1, group show North Light Gallery, Huddersfield, solo show Messum’s, Cork Street, W1, solo show Messum’s, Cork Street, W1, solo show Tate St Ives: Rose Hilton: The Beauty of Ordinary Things, a Selected Retrospective, 1950-2007 Messum’s, Cork Street, W1, solo show and launch of Andrew Lambirth’s book Rose Hilton: Something to Keep the Balance Messum’s, Cork Street, W1, solo show Messum’s, Cork Street, W1, solo show Messum’s, Cork Street, W1, solo show ‘Giving Life to Painting’ Studio 3 Gallery, School of Art, University of Kent Messum’s, Cork Street, W1, solo show and launch of Ian Collins’ book Rose Hilton Messum’s, Cork Street, W1, solo show
Public Collections which include works by Rose Hilton: Plymouth Museum and Art Gallery; The Nuffield Collection; Cornwall County Council: Truro Art Gallery
Reclining Figure II
* These works are currently on loan to The Royal West
of England Academy, Bristol, for their major exhibition ‘In Relation: Nine Couples who Transformed Modern British Art’ 16 June – 9 September. These 3 works are for sale, but would be unavailable until September 28th 2018.
CDXLII
ISBN 978-1-910993-34-7 Publication No: CDXLII Published by David Messum Fine Art © David Messum Fine Art
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Studio, Lords Wood, Marlow, Buckinghamshire. Tel: 01628 486565 www.messums.com Photography: Steve Russell, Peter Harris Printed by DLM-Creative
ink drawing 26 x 39 cms 101⁄4 x 153⁄8 ins
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