Roger Hilton 1911-1975

Provenance

Estate of the Artist

Provenance

Private Collection, Sweden

This painting might almost be seen as a companion piece to the great blue painting of the period, The Aral Sea (also 1958), the largest picture in Hilton’s oeuvre. The roughly rounded quadrilateral which takes up most of the picture plane, and which in other paintings becomes a boat or a cup or a breast, is here a broadly painted expanse, like a park or an arena, in and around which the painterly activity can take place. Less overtly sexualized than The Aral Sea, which features a primitive Earth Mother coming out of the ocean, Green offers fundamentally unspecific imagery (and content), though the black outline of some sort of archaic figure may be discerned, juxtaposed with various other gestural marks and insignia. Over-painting and layering are key strategies here, together with the way in which one area of colour meets or overlaps another. However much we may try to discover figurative imagery in this canvas, the painting is really about how a line of yolk yellow looks against a warm light grey, whilst abutting a lively and determined viridian, grassy but with blue notes coming through. This really is lyrical abstraction. - Andrew Lambirth 2014

Provenance

Estate of the Artist

Provenance

Estate of the Artist