About the work

This remarkable painting comes from a major corporate art collection and is fresh to the market. It retains the original gallery label from the renowned Desert-Southwest Art Gallery (known earlier as the Desert Magazine Gallery) located on Highway 111 in the heart of Palm Desert. The gallery was founded in 1948 by Desert Magazine and was long regarded as the social and art center of the Palm Springs area. Both the magazine and its artists helped define the mystique of the California desert for the nation and the world.

The gallery label includes the work’s title and is dated February, 1966. During its heyday in the 1960s, Desert-Southwest Art Gallery attracted more than 60,000 visitors a year. Hilton was a featured artist for the duration of gallery’s decades-long existence where his works were showcased in more than 30 one-man shows. Other notable artists presented at the gallery included Jimmy Swinnerton, Burt Procter, Rex Brandt, Sam Hyde Harris, Olaf Weighorst, Brownell McGrew, William Darling, Marjorie Reed, Edna Spangler and Conrad Buff to name a few.

The painting and frame are in excellent condition.

About the artist…   

The tranquility and beauty of the desert was a lifelong source of inspiration for Hilton. In an article from the March 1960 edition of Arizona Highways, he declared:

This is my desert! It extends through Arizona, southern California, Nevada, southern Utah, New Mexico and northern Mexico states of Sonora, Chihuaha, Sinaloa and Baja California. . . . It is a land of peace, silence and boundless skies.                           

Hilton’s early artistic endeavors were filled with frustration, but in the late 1930s/early 40s he worked with and was encouraged by many of the fine painters who visited or lived in the desert, including Nicolai Fechin, Maynard Dixon, Jimmy Swinnerton, and Clyde Forsythe.

Dixon in particular had two profound effects on Hilton: First, he convinced Hilton to throw away his early paintings, even though some had won awards at smaller exhibitions and shows. Hilton later remarked that an artist could never progress to the next level if he fell in love with his work. Dixon also convinced him to throw away his brushes and use a knife. Dixon felt Hilton's images were too precise, almost photographic. Hilton claimed that converting to knife painting was a relatively effortless transition if only because he easily tired of cleaning brushes.

Gradually the recognition and accolades came, and Hilton eventually became one of the few artists of his day to enjoy significant commercial and critical success during his lifetime. 

Hilton’s works have been widely exhibited, including the Biltmore Salon Los Angeles; the Riverside Mission Inn; Paschke’s Gallery in Riverside; the Laguna Beach Art Gallery; Los Angeles City Hall and Public Library; the Southwest Museum; Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco; La Jolla Art Gallery; Desert Magazine Art Gallery; the Desert Art Center of Palm Springs, and numerous other galleries and shows where his works were often sellouts.

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