Roger Hilton’s bright, gestural practice is greatly celebrated amongst 20th Century British Art. From 1929 to 1931 he studied at the Slade School of Art under former surgeon and artist Henry Tonks and won the Orpen Prize in 1930.
Inspired by European avant-garde artists, his abstracted painting of the 50s and 60s increasingly contained figurative elements. He began to align with the St Ives group from the mid-1960s and made regular trips to Cornwall where subjects of boats, harbours and water began appearing in his work.
In 1963, Hilton won the John Moores painting prize, and a year late exhibited at the Venice Biennale where he won the UNESCO prize.
Hilton moved from London to Zennor, Cornwall in 1965 with his second wife Rose (an artist in her own right, who priorotised her husband's success) and their two sons. In the 1970s, despite being bedbound due to ill health brought on by alcoholism, Hilton still produced several gouache paintings from over the side of his bed, working onto large sheets of paper laid on the floor. In 1968, he was awarded a CBE for his practice.