Rose Hilton in her Penzance studio in 2006. Photograph: Antony Crolla
rose hilton
Painter
1931 – 2019
Suggested by Helen Beard
Helen writes,
“Rose Hilton is a painter with such a unique and sensitive style. I love her work and that she found her artist’s voice after her husband Roger Hilton, passed away, and that she grew in confidence after that to become the recognised artist she is today. She was always so glamorous too.”
Quote from Rose Hilton Obituary, The Guardian 28 March 2019 by Ruth Guilding:
“The painter Rose Hilton…was a last link with the wilder art diaspora of far west Cornwall, beyond St Ives. The sensual female nude was her chief subject, building on the legacy of Bonnard and Matisse, but from the 90s there were also abstracts, layered fields and veils of deliquescent colour, pointillist dots and dashes and dancing forms, her postmodernist homage to Patrick Heron and Ivon Hitchens.”
From the The Hypatia Trust’s Women in Cornwall archive:
“Rose Hilton attended the Royal College of Art in London where she excelled at draughtsmanship and mixed with the likes of Frank Auerbach, Peter Blake, and Bridget Riley.
A few years after graduating, she met and fell for the artist Roger Hilton, an imposing talent but notoriously difficult character who asserted that there was only room for one artist in their relationship. As a result, Rose Hilton painted only very infrequently during their marriage, and devoted herself to being a wife and mother.
In 1965 the couple and their young family moved to a cottage on Bottalack Moor in the far west of Cornwall, where Roger Hilton continued to paint while Rose Hilton raised their young sons and looked after the home.
Rose picked up her brushes again after Roger’s death in 1975 and in 1977 she had her first solo show at Newlyn Art Gallery, and from 1989 she began showing regularly with Messum’s gallery in London. She was recognised with a retrospective show at Tate St Ives in 2008.