August 15th Rose Hilton (Birth)
     

Kent - born Rose Hilton, née Phipps, (1931 – 2019), the daughter of a baker who was a member of the ultra-conservative religious grouping, the Plymouth Brethren, studied at the Royal College of Art, where a fellow student was Peter Blake and where she was awarded the Life Drawing and Painting Prize and the Abbey Minor Scholarship to Rome.

Returning to London to teach art, she met the abstract artist Roger Hilton (April 30th) and on their marriage they moved to Botallack where they became friends with W.S. Graham (November 19th) and became established members of The St. Ives School of Painting including Patrick Heron (March 20th), John Wells (July 28th), Peter Lanyon (August 31st), Bryan Wynter (September 8th) and Sir Terry Frost (October 13th)

It was only after Roger’s death in 1975 that Rose began exhibiting, with her first solo exhibition being held at the Newlyn Art Gallery in 1977.  Concentrating on post-impressionistic figurative painting, it was noted that her work showed clear influences by Matisse and she was also compared, favourably, with Pierre Bonnard. Roger was less than keen on her painting as he believed there could be only one artist in the family, which of course, could only be him. 

Nevertheless, she influenced Roger to include figure in his abstract paintings whilst, in his last three years when he was bedridden with peripheral neuritis, he helped her develop abstraction into her figurative works.   Rose became famous in the late 1980s having been exhibited by the London dealer David Messum and her later works included bright colours and pointillism.  She exhibited at the Royal Academy in 2015 and has been the subject of two monographs.

 

 



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