Roger Hilton

Galerie Charles Lienhard, Zurich
Waddington Galleries, London, where acquired by the present owner, October 1987

London, Serpentine Gallery, Roger Hilton: Paintings and Drawings 1931-1973, 1st - 31st March 1974, cat. no.55.

Adrian Lewis, Roger Hilton, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2003, p.112, illustrated fig.56;
Andrew Lambirth, Roger Hilton: The Figured Language of Thought, Thames and Hudson, London, 2007, illustrated p.157.

Original canvas. The canvas appears sound. There is some very minor rubbing to some of the extreme edges of the canvas. There are two small scuffs, with some associated loss, at the centre of the right edge. There is some very slight flattening and one or two losses to some of the impasto tips, only visible upon very close inspection. There are some traces of light surface dirt, studio detritus and handling marks in places. Subject to the above, the work appears to be in excellent overall condition. Ultraviolet light reveals several spots and flecks of retouching to the cream and white pigments along the upper edge, which have been sensitively executed. The work is presented in a painted wooden frame. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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The year in which Hilton produced the present work – 1961 – was to be a pivotal year for the artist, and the beginning of a period widely to be considered the best of his career. Having been taken on by the highly regarded Waddington Galleries in 1959, 1961 saw his first major show with Charles Lienhard in Zurich – the gallery through which the present work was first sold. For the introduction to this catalogue the gallery looked to one of the most recognised and regarded figures within the British art scene, Alan Bowness, who had championed Hilton, together with contemporaries including Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon and Bryan Wynter from an early stage. Bowness’ introduction was brief but hard-hitting, before handing a more detailed and thorough introduction to the artist himself. Hilton wrote of his approach towards his subject, and his reinvention of figuration in a beautifully lyrical and informed manner. For all his skills as a painter, he was also a great philosopher, something which comes across in his extensive writings, including his introduction to the 1961 exhibition, in which he wrote that:

‘Abstraction in itself is nothing. It is only a step towards a new figuration, that is, one which is more true… For an abstract painter there are two ways out or on: he must give up painting and take to architecture, or he must reinvent figuration’ (The Artist, quoted in Roger Hilton (exh. cat.), Galerie Charles Lienhard, Zurich, 1961).

At the time of this painting Hilton was certainly seen as one of the most exciting and progressive contemporary artists working in Britain and Europe, with his unique style that blended thoughtful control with wild abandon. His brushwork becomes looser, with a greater sense of energy; an energy that is almost desperate to escape the canvas; and his palette broader, incorporating new earthy hues of burnished browns and a deep, almost bloody tangerine orange in the top right of the composition. The paint is freely applied, pushed and pulled around the surface of the canvas, with bold horizontal black lines dominating the central block of brown and the white of the far left hand edge providing a great fresh breath to the form. Hilton’s use of the busily black painted lines can be seen in December 1960 (Private Collection, sold in these rooms 18^th November 2014, for £170,500; a record price for a work by the artist sold at auction). In this work, as in the present composition, the brushwork is alive, and the forms find a new voice that in 1961 must have been an incredibly exciting thing to experience. Yet that excitement of experiencing this work in person is still there today, and there is no doubt that this work, together with December 1960, belong together as paintings created at the height of the artist’s career. March 1961 serves to showcase the skill of an artist that at the time was equally well regarded in Britain as he was across Europe, leading to his winning the John Moores Prize in 1963, followed by the UNESCO prize at the Venice Biennale a year later.