How does a Salmagundi Club member and a famed desert artist achieve such a level of success? For John W. Hilton (1904-1983), there was help along the way.

Beginning as a self taught artist, his early paintings attracted and sustained the attention of famed artists Jimmy Swinnerton, Clyde Forsythe, Maynard Dixon and Nicolai Fechin. Beginning as his teachers, these renowned artists hung around and became John's life-long friends.

Courtesy of John Hilton's daughter, artist Kathi Hilton, here are some reprinted excerpts from John W. Hilton's biography, The Man Who Captured Sunshine by Katherine Ainsworth. Katie often quotes John as he recalls the early days, recounting how he met and what he learned from these more experienced painters.

Blurb from the the jacket of The Man Who Captured Sunshine. ... The Man Who Captured Sunshine is a biography of a remarkable, modern day Renaissance Man -- John W. Hilton. Though John Hilton is best known as the "Dean of American Desert Painters," he is also a distinguished botanist, gemologist and zoologist. Hilton is a noted writer and linguist, a guitarist and singer. Katherine Ainsworth makes no apology for the "lack of objectivity" in writing this book ... she has been a friend and admirer of John Hilton for over thirty years. Katie's late husband, Ed Ainsworth, was John Hilton's best friend for almost as many years. This "labor of love" has resulted in a magnificent book about a magnificent man.

“Those were the sweetest words I ever heard,” recalled Hilton. “When she asked me how much I wanted for the picture I figured fast and hard and came up with the price of thirty dollars. That would just about cover the cost of the parts I needed to get my Ford running again.

That dear lady ripped out three of the prettiest ten dollar bills I had ever seen and said she would be back with the woman who owned the hotel where she was staying in Palm Springs. I've often wondered where that little painting is today. It would be worth about $1,500 on the present market."

“I stood ten feet tall,” Hilton later wrote for Desert Magazine in describing that first painting sale. “The beautiful desert shone around me and the sky overhead seemed a little bluer than I had ever seen it before. I was a professional artist!"

The lady Mrs. Weed mentioned turned out to be Nellie Coffman who came and brought Harriet Day. Harriet brought artists Jimmy Swinnerton and Clyde Forsythe and they in turn brought Maynard Dixon and Nicolai Fechin. “So you see,” explained Hilton, “the debt of gratitude I owe those wonderfully kind women when they brought those giants of the art world to me."

Jimmy Swinnerton -- (1875 - 1974) a pioneer in establishing newspaper comic strips. Studied at the California Art School in SF with classmate Maynard Dixon. Worked for William Randolph Hearst papers in San Francisco and New York. Diagnosed with tuberculosis, Jimmy relocated to Palm Springs and thrived. He became Dean of the the Desert School of Painting. He maintained friendships with a wide circle, including humorist Will Rogers, and artists Maynard Dixon, John W. Hilton, and LA Times editor Ed Ainsworth.

As Forsythe poetically painted great cloud masses over scorched hills, and put the hills themselves into flowing masses across illimitable horizons against skies of his famous intense blue, he would expound upon his pet theory he called ‘dynamic symmetry.’ By this he meant the almost exact arithmetical precision in which he laid out his painting and, using a series of carefully calculated triangles drawn in charcoal, his preliminary sketches resembled architectural plans.

“I’d listen to Clyde and then secretly tried to utilize his ‘dynamic symmetry’ theories in my paintings, but it never seemed quite to jell when I did it, “ recalled Hilton.

“The landscapes Clyde did were sometimes rather tight because they fitted into his diagrams and triangles,” commented Hilton recently. “He literally built his canvases before starting to paint. He would draw these triangles in with charcoal and they looked like a modern impressionistic drawing, and he would paint and fill in each triangle."

“Lots of people today think that just because they can’t see the artist’s composition in a painting at first glance that old fashioned painters don’t know composition. Just because these paintings aren't a series of ovals and triangles in the finished painting doesn't mean they weren’t the first concept in the artist’s mind."

“While Clyde’s technique was too formal for me, I did learn balance and harmony. While maybe, I didn’t learn as much from watching Clyde paint as from other painters, I owe him an eternal debt of gratitude for his friendship and his generous introductions to artists who became my friends,” admitted Hilton. “While Swinnerton and Forsythe were comparatively gentle with me and my first painting fumbles, Dixon and Fechin really poured it on.”

Clyde Forsythe (1885-1962) -- a renowned New York cartoonist in his early days, he shared a studio with artist friend Norman Rockwell whom he prodded into submitting his portfolio to the Saturday Evening Post. In the late 1930’s, Clyde moved to Alhambra California, living on "Artist’s Alley" where he was neighbors with Frank Tenney Johnson, Sam Hyde Harris, sculptor Eli Harvey, Jack Wilkerson Smith, and part year resident Norman Rockwell. Clyde was a frequent visitor to the home of John W. Hilton and kept close ties with Ed Ainsworth.

Coming to the desert, Dixon set up camp in nearby Mecca and roved this region and made it his own.

Hilton’s shop at Valerie Corners was directly across the desert on the other side of the Coachella Valley.

Dixon was a hard taskmaster. First he made Hilton throw away everything he had done during the first three years of his endeavor -- even though some of these had won prizes in minor competitions amongst artists who were even worse than John at that period.

“This taught me one thing I’ll never forget,” Hilton admitted somewhat ruefully. “Never fall in love with your own work and hug it to your bosom. If you do, you can’t get past that stage. And art is a continuing process of growth and widening vision. If you really think your stuff is good, you are stuck at that level ... so I try never to fall in love with my own paintings. Some people think it is callous to be able to part with a painting, but it is the only way to progress."

Dixon affirmed and put into words the thoughts John Hilton had long been pondering within his soul. Emblazoned upon Hilton’s memory is one of Dixon’s last aphorisms, “Success of the true artist is in knowing he has stated the truth of his vision in his own terms."

Hilton knew this and believed it with every breath he drew -- but finding just what his own artistic terms were was a problem. Within his mind’s eye all was crystal clear, but his awkward untutored hands kept failing his vision. It was Nicolai Fechin who helped him at this moment.

Nicolai Fechin, the frail Russian expatriate, shared Dixon's almost mystical devotion to the California desert and to the Indians living in New Mexico near Taos. After enduring years of almost slavery in the Royal Russian Academy of Art learning his craft, Fechin came to the United States. It was not until Nicolai found the vast, unlimited spaces of the American desert that his soul expanded with a sense of freedom.

He spoke almost entirely on canvas. The vividness of his colors, the profusion of his paint were veritably Florentine in their exuberance. Naturally, even the most promising and established American artists sought to become his pupils.

Hilton was overjoyed when he learned that Nicolai planned to spend an entire winter in Palm Springs in the studio loaned to him by his benefactor, John Burnham.

Fechin hated to drive, in fact, probably had never learned, and requested John to drive him to scenic places and to the Indians he knew so well. In exchange Fechin offered to criticize Hilton’s work.

“He was a stern task setter,” recalled Hilton. “Fechin was a small intense man with steely, penetrating blue eyes. It was as though he possessed an inner smoldering fire of creativity and those eyes looked keenly into another person’s soul and all shoddiness was burned away. With Nicolai, a person's petty meannesses and false pretenses shrank and disappeared."

“To be with Nicolai Fechin was a priceless opportunity and I dropped everything I could to be with him. The first time he went through all my stuff, and I had painted like mad after Maynard had culled out most of my poor paintings, I nearly died because there were many which were salable. I couldn’t help but protest weakly. ‘Nicolai,’ I said, ‘if I destroy all these I shall go broke.’

“He was ruthless and merely said, ‘Sell your cactus, sell your rocks, sell everything you have, but get to work on your art.’ Tough as times were, I had faith in Fechin and did as he ordered.

“Then he said to me, ‘You do not know how to draw. No one can paint unless he knows how to draw. Here,’ he said, ‘draw this.’

There was a skull on a desk. For the next three months he said, ‘Don’t paint, just draw.’

“He rigged up an electric light on a cord and hung it from the ceiling. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘light the skull from every angle and draw it. Bring your sketches to me when you think they are worth looking at.”

“I drew that damned skull from every angle and in every light. When I thought a sketch was pretty good, I'd take it up to Fechin's studio in Palm Springs. He'd take one look and usually tore the drawing up and merely said, 'Now get back to your drawings. He kept saying to me, 'Get behind the principle.'

"For a long time I didn't quite know what he meant," confessed Hilton, "and then one day it dawned on me. He meant that a successful painting had to go 'beyond the principle; or the mere surface and penetrate down into reality -- the thing itself. Once that had penetrated my thick head, Fechin said I was ready to resume painting. For several years Nicolai Fechin was a very strong influence in my art life while at no time did I attempt to paint like Nicolai, nor even used the same subject matter. We had tremendous respect for each other and I don't believe anyone had the effect upon my life that Nicolai had."

Three hundred and fifty years ago, Dutch and Flemish painters created landscapes, portraits, still lifes, and interior scenes of everyday Dutch life, all done with dazzling natural light, compelling composition, and captivating beauty.

Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection currently at San Francisco's Legion of Honor is an amazing testament to what is possible with paint, canvas, and imagination. As your eyes adjust to the gallery lighting, with eyes widening and jaws dropping, you know you are in the presence of extraordinary genius.

asserted its more secular tastes.

At the dawn of the 17th century, the Dutch were emerging as as the pre-eminent military and commercial power in the world. Their tiny nation was in the midst of gaining independence from Catholic Spain, freeing itself from Spanish taxes and the Catholic oppression of Protestantism. They were a successful, proud, and tolerant people who wanted to celebrate the vibrancy of their culture through their art.

Dutch artists were painting for a new kind of market, not dominated by aristocrats but by newly empowered everyday people. By the mid 17th century the Dutch were masters of the sea, bringing spices to Europe from Asia, and goods and raw materials from the Americas and South Africa, not to mention a wealth of new ideas to a dynamically changing Europe. They saw themselves as shapers of the world, not defined by it.

Paintings with classical themes were produced at the time, but didn't do well in the booming art market. Art buyers wanted more secular themes, paintings about their society, their accomplishments, their way of life. Consequently, this exhibit offers a quintessential view of mid 17th century Dutch life, its architecture, the implements of their daily lives, their dress, their sense of style, and even their sense of humor.

The Walt Disney Family Museum
tickets available online
The WDFM tells Walt's story from his early days through the creation of his famed "Mouse Factory" and the Magic Kingdom. Displays superbly present pre-computerized animation, explaining the artistic, technical, and imaginative processes, Well Worth a Visit!

Film of the Month: Sep 1-Sep 30
So Dear to My Heart
1:00pm and 4:00pm
(daily except Tuesdays, and September 17 and 24) ($)
About a boy named Jeremiah who grows up on his Grandmother's farm and trains his baby lamb, Danny, to compete in a county fair. Will Jeremiah and Danny win a prize at the fair?