ROGER HILTON

1911-1975

Seated Woman, probably Guilhen Perrier

Oil on board
40.6 x 33 cm

Signed 'ROGER HILTON' (lower right)

There is an abstract painting on the reverse.
Painted circa 1931-33.

PROVENANCE:

Sotheby's, London, 5 March 1997, lot 195

Painted in the early Thirties, the sitter is most probably Guilhen Perrier, a French art student with whom Hilton was infatuated in the early 1930s. He moved to Paris in September 1931 to join Guilhen, a budding artist, and enrolled at the Académie Ranson. Hilton was later to refer to Guilhen Perrier as ‘the only women I ever loved”.

Roger Hilton was a pioneer of abstract art in post-war Britain. After studying at the Slade, then in Paris, in World War II he served in the Army, part of the time as a Commando, for about three years being a prisoner of war after the Dieppe raid of 1942. He worked as a schoolteacher for a time after the war, also teaching at Central School of Arts and Crafts, 1954-6.

During the 1950s and 1960s Hilton began to spend more time in west Cornwall, moving there permanently in 1965. He became a prominent member of the St. Ives School and gained an international reputation. He won the 1963 John Moores Painting Prize, and was appointed C.B.E. in 1968. By 1974 he was confined to bed as an invalid precipitated in part by alcoholism.

PRICE £18,000