La Route des Alpes (1937) was painted after a brief stay near Vence in the South, whilst Hillier and his second wife, Leda Millicent Hardcastle, were staying in France, which they did until 1940. He described in his autobiography Leda and the Goose (1954): "Here I started to paint landscape again, not in my earlier manner en plein air, but attempting to construct my pictures from rough drawings which I would elaborate in the studio, in the style of the Flemish and Italian masters whose work I had recently had so much opportunity of studying. This was the beginning of my ultimate phase in painting, and became the manner in which I have worked ever since.'