The Simon Hilton Collection brings together works acquired over a lifetime spent looking, learning, buying and living with art.

A dealer, collector and lifelong enthusiast, Simon’s interest in objects began early. As a schoolboy, he collected stamps, cheese labels and arms and armour, developing the instinct for discovery and exchange that would shape the rest of his life. The latter collection would eventually help fund the deposit on his first home.

Growing up around his father’s King Street Gallery in Cambridge, Simon became familiar with artists, pictures and the rhythms of gallery life from an early age. Although he initially trained as an accountant, a summer spent helping in the family business led him permanently into the art world.

Over the decades, he has bought and sold across a wide range of fields, from French Barbizon painting to Modern British art. Yet the collection presented here has never been assembled for commercial reasons alone. Each work was chosen because it appealed to him, intrigued him or carried a story worth pursuing.

Modern British art lies at the heart of the sale, including works by artists Simon has admired and returned to throughout his career. Among them are Roderick Barrett, whose work was first exhibited by Simon’s father in Cambridge; John Nash, represented through works from the artist’s estate; and Peter Schmidt, whose paintings were discovered by chance at a small art fair near Hertford.

The collection also includes Jacob Epstein’s compelling bust of Isabel, a portrait connected to one of the most fascinating artistic lives of the 20th century. Isabel was Epstein’s model in the early 1930s and later moved within the circles of artists and composers including André Derain, Alberto Giacometti, Constant Lambert, Alan Rawsthorne and Francis Bacon.

Now spending part of each year in France and considering the next chapter for his Norfolk home, Simon has decided that the time is right to part with works that have brought him pleasure for many years.

As he puts it: “I’ve learnt never to buy a picture I didn’t like. If I didn’t sell it, I could still hang it on the wall and enjoy it.”