In spite of being difficult in a rather disagreeable way from his earliest years (he was born in 1911) Hilton received devoted support from all quarters — from his parents (his father was a GP, child specialist and rowing blue of German Jewish descent who changed his name from Hildesheim in 1916; his mother studied painting at the Slade); and from fellow painters like Patrick Heron and Terry Frost and the critics who championed his work: Laurence Alloway, Norbert Lynton, Alan Bowness. He must, of course, have been lovable too — a quality notoriously difficult to convey. Lambirth does a good job of preserving something of the attraction of Hilton’s company, his intelligence and elegance, and the charm of his conversation before the drink turned him ugly, but the real justification for his book is ‘to encourage people to look more closely at a lot of Hilton’s work’.
In 1965 Hilton moved permanently to St Ives in what proved to be the final act of his ‘self-sabotage’. With repeated attempts at drying out, and in spite of the late gouaches — that final burst of ‘strangely joyous activity’ — the end is harrowing.
This is a vivid, knowledgable book, handsomely produced and illustrated, which will appeal to all admirers of Hilton’s work. Its subtitle is a quotation from Coleridge and chapters are headed with extracts from Delacroix’s journal. Lambirth’s frame of reference is broader and more literary (poems are quoted) than is commonly the case with artists’ monographs, not overtly scholarly, and his throw-away, no-nonsense style (despite an occasional weakness for horrible words like ‘prolificacy’ and ‘fecundating’) has an appealing casualness, and a directness that allows clear expression of his own enthusiasm for the artist’s work and his sympathetic understanding for a man whom many people regarded as most unpleasant.
Comments
There are currently no comments for this article.