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Born in
Carrington, North Dakota, John W. Hilton has a reputation for desert landscape
painting as well as cowboys, horses, and cattle. He was also a poet, musician,
geologist, miner, and entertainer.
His father was a baker, and the family lived in a shack on a farm. When he was
four, he went to China with his mother and father, who became a missionary.
There he met Chinese bandits, philosophers, and walked along the Great Wall by
the time he was age 10. The family was separated during the Sun Yat Sen
revolution, and thinking the father was dead, the mother returned to North
Dakota where the father eventually found them.
John moved to Los Angeles in 1918 and worked for a gem company, but it folded
during the Depression. Then he designed jewelry for Hollywood film stars and
sold stones world wide.
In the 1930s, financially broke, he moved to the desert determined to become a
painter and supporting himself as a singer and guitar player. He also operated a
curio shop near Indio, California, and from that time lived either in the desert
or at Twenty-Nine Palms.
Sketching trips with Maynard Dixon, Nicolai Fechin, Jimmy Swinnerton, Orpha
Klinker, and Clyde Forsythe influenced his style. He combined a beeswax mixture
with his paints that gave his landscapes a special luster. He wrote and
illustrated several books including "Sonora Sketch Book," 1947, and "Hilton
Paints the Desert" in 1964. His illustrations appeared in the "LA Times" and the
"Saturday Evening Post."
He was highly successful financially and was elected to the Grand Central
Galleries in New York where he had numerous exhibitions as well as in
California. Hilton has also painted many landscapes of Hawaii where he had a
summer home at Lahaina, Maui.
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SOLD ARTWORK |

Cool Water -
SOLD |

Untitled Desert Scene -
SOLD |

Smoke Trees In The Sun
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SOLD |

Easter Sunrise -
SOLD |

Spring Blessing -
SOLD |

Splendid Afternoon -
SOLD |

Sunrise On Camelback Mountain -
SOLD |

Untitled Desert Scene -
SOLD |

Untitled Desert Canyon Scene
- SOLD |

Desert Spring
- SOLD |

Flowering Dunes In The Spring
- SOLD |

Light In The Window
- SOLD |

Golden Rhapsody
- SOLD |

Untitled Desert Scene
- SOLD |

Arizona Gold
- SOLD |

Billy The Kid
- SOLD |

Smoke Tree Reverie
- SOLD |
We invite you to visit our gallery in person
or via this website. Please contact us with your questions and
remember: we can ship to you promptly, worldwide.
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