cover 1 Across Penwith oil on canvas 61 x 81 cms 24 x 32 ins

opposite 2 Woman oil on canvas 46 x 61 cms 18 x 24 ins 2018

3 www.messums.com Blue Still Life oil on canvas 28 Cork Street, London W1S 3NG 76 x 76 cms 30 x 30 ins Telephone: +44 (0)20 7437 5545 4 Apollo oil on canvas 123 x 183 cms 1 48 ⁄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 to the work but it was far from superficial. Certain pictures Photograph © Antony Crolla 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 1 41 x 39 cms 16 x 15 ⁄2 ins Introduction

One vigorous line of art historical thought pursued a few of colour and warmth, of sensuality and light, of the human years ago sought to view the work of women artists as a form and womanliness. fundamental response to the suffering and restrictions they In fact, if the trials of her life have honed her and her had experienced, whether thrown at them by circumstance art in any way, one suspects it has actually reinforced a or by oppressive men. While it’s an idea potentially relevant set of heartening values, fuelling what has proved to be to artists such as Frida Kahlo and Tracey Emin, whose a remarkable and long-developed resilience. Rose Hilton art is often autobiographical and has trauma to relay, the has carried her art, her voice, her seductive outpouring same approach feels less appropriate for Gillian Ayres say, of light and form now into her 80s, where she still delights or Helen Frankenthaler, whose inspirations appear less in working regularly, testing herself, exploring possibilities, self-focused. and creating pleasure through beauty. It is a notion, though, that hovers in the background of It was this well-spring of work – one that she started Rose Hilton’s work, initially at least because one is aware fully exploring after the death of Roger Hilton in 1975 – that of a level of suffering and subjection that has threaded David Messum first came across in 1987, when visiting through parts of her life – whether in the form of serious from London. It was an extraordinary discovery for illness (she had TB while at art college), or her looking after both of them, fortuitous, gratifying, which initially resulted in a famously cantankerous (and famous) husband, or he the first of Rose’s shows at Messum’s in 1989. This event actually demanding she shouldn’t paint – she has too often marked the start of a succession of what has now been been seen or referred to in these terms. over a dozen highly successful London solo exhibitions, as And yet the notion is ultimately invalid: the true Rose well as a watershed retrospective show at St Ives in Hilton, not only the person one meets and talks delightedly 2008. The 1989 show also marked the beginning of a long with, but also the spirit that emanates from her art, seems journey towards proper recognition, an understanding not not at all sculpted by the experience of suffering. Quite the only of the true worth of her work, the shimmering powers reverse, as hers is, and as seems always to have been, she is able to conjure up, but also of her being able to a generous, open-hearted world, whatever the slings and establish herself fully beyond the shadow of Roger Hilton, arrows that have sometimes rained down. It is a world full 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 of 1959 asked her to venerated phases of post-war British art. Just recently she his cottage in Georgia, has been approached increasingly by curators as being the to the west of St Ives, last of a famous generation of St Ives artists still working, where they spent an still alive. But that is only a slice of it. idyllic two weeks, It’s a story that starts with her joining the Royal College before Rose took up a of Art in 1953, and being launched into an art scene that teaching post at Sidcup was becoming fast-changing in its response to new post- Art School (where one war ideas and art movements from the continent and of her pupils was Keith America. In her same year at the RCA were names like Richards). Rose and Peter Blake, Pauline Boty, Brian Fielding, Sonia Lawson Roger began to be seen and Ken Howard. Rose’s tutor at the RCA, Carel Weight, around town, Rose had set up the renowned Young Contemporaries annual being immersed in an exhibitions, which is where artists like Robyn Denny, Derek art scene that took her Rose on the roof of her Fulham Road Boshier and Richard Smith showed their ground-breaking flat in 1958 from Keith Vaughan to work, these exhibitions also attracting people like David Francis Bacon, and from Hockney and Frank Auerbach. London to Cornwall, finding herself with people and ideas Rose too exhibited at the Young Contemporaries show, of prime importance and interest. and while her work followed more figurative lines (with early After hiccoughs, estrangements, the birth of their son praise and prizes) she was fascinated by the adventure of Bo, and settling down in a Cathcart Road London flat, they more radical students. Brian Fielding, the abstract painter, found a good period, Roger producing some of his best became a particular friend, and when she graduated in work at the studio in St John’s Wood, with Rose looking 1957 she collected her degree with the revolutionary after Bo and (surreptitiously) using a bedroom space for Richard Smith. The RCA in the mid-50s was a vibrant hub her own work. There were extensive journeys to France, of new ideas and strutting characters, questioning the with visits to galleries and artists’ studios, Rose being edges of what art might do; Rose’s participation involved introduced to such powerful artistic figures as Pierre her in new different languages of art, and important and Soulages. Most of all there were trips to Cornwall, where exhilarating companions. a group of abstract artists had been forming around St Out into the London scene of the late ’50s, she took on Ives since the late 1950s, including the friends who Rose a flat on the Fulham Road producing work that won her a and Roger most centred on, Peter Lanyon, Bryan Wynter, scholarship to Italy for a year. Wanting to sub-let her flat, she John Wells and Patrick Heron. put a note in the RCA, which was seen by Robyn Denny, Cornwall seems to have acted like a golden thread who told his friend Sandra Blow, herself just back from Italy, through the history of Modern British art. It was the living with the artist Alberto Burri. Sandra Blow came to see crucible for that legendary moment of Modernism when the flat two days in a row, first with Roger Hilton, then with Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood met with the self- Bryan Wynter, both artists by then of considerable note. taught painter Alfred Wallis in St Ives in 1928. Even forty This was Rose’s first meeting with Roger. years earlier, artists had begun coming to Cornwall, to It’s an episode that bore much fruit. Sandra Blow, the Penwith peninsula, British artists who had spent glamorous and successful, took the flat, and became a time in France, like Stanhope Forbes and Harold Harvey, life-long friend. Roger – after Rose returned from Rome – exponents of the Newlyn School. In the post-war period, began to see her (20 years his junior) and in the summer 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 She was drawn to looking at French art, and to Matisse Rose, 1970 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 knowledge of and relationship with, was an historic beginning to exert an entrancing power, to display gifts exploration of abstraction, that grew from the 50s into the of colour, light and passion that were to attract increasing 60s, and