About John William Hilton

  • Biography

    Born in Carrington, North Dakota, John Hilton is known for desert landscape painting as well as scenes with 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 duri...

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