ROSE HILTON, who would have been 90 this summer, is being celebrated with a sparkling memorial show in London. Her brilliantly abstracted landscapes and figures in intriguing settings combine in a toast to life.
She was the last survivor from the heyday of Modernist art in Cornwall. As muse and carer for the rampageous Roger Hilton, she also had a rare perspective as a liberated artist and a put-upon wife. Her art evolved ravishingly in the half of her life spent in merry widowhood, but it had always been her mainspring. She made the most of every scrap of existence, revelling in people most of all.
When I posed for her once, in a studio high above Newlyn harbor, she said: ‘This is so good of you. The last man who took his clothes off in my studio came to read the electricity meter.’ Such was this woman’s charm. Her looks were a knockout, too. A tall, lithe figure who could throw together designer outfits and bargain-basement refits, she remained unselfconsciously stylish until her death aged 87.
Born Rosemary Phipps, a Kent baker’s daughter from Leigh, near Tonbridge, she was the fourth of eight children in a Plymouth Brethren family. Art and music were banned—save for Biblical scenes and chapel hymns—but the quietly subversive siblings conspired to enjoy blissful rural childhoods.
Mrs Phipps, a thwarted missionary, settled for enlisting her children in the service of the Lord—preachers, ideally, or at least doctors, nurses and teachers. Rosemary secretly applied to the Royal College of Art and all hell broke loose when a scholarship was secured.
Denne historien er fra June 23, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra June 23, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
