The Gallery at Rancho Ellenita
John W. Hilton

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Hilton was born in Carrington, North Dakota, son of itinerant missionaries. At age 4, his family sailed to China; they were to return to North Dakota and back to China before his tenth birthday. By age 13, his family has moved to Los Angeles to do missionary work among the Chinese immigrants.

In 1918, he moved of Los Angeles, where he went to work for the largest wholesale jewel dealer in the West. In the 1930's he ran a curio shop across the street from Valerie Jean’s Date Shop (Ave. 66 & Harrison Street) and began painting in the desert. For years, he had a tradition of building an ironwood pyre in Box Canyon on New Year’s Eve and burning all of the paintings of the year that did not please him.

A Renaissance man, he was a poet, musician, author (Sonora Sketch Book ,1940; This is My Desert, 1962; Hilton Paints the Desert, 1964) and illustrator (L.A. Times, Saturday Evening Post, & The Desert Magazine).

He was a frequently featured artist at The Desert Magazine Gallery in Palm Desert. Hilton once said: “To me, there are three great things the desert has: space, quiet, and sunshine.”1

In the last decade of his life, he also had a home in Maui, but his desert landscapes have exceeded his Hawaiian work in popularity.

Ed Ainsworth called Hilton: “The Man Who Captured Sunshine”1


1Ed Ainsworth, Painters of the Desert

Spring in the Brown Mountains
24" x 18"

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