Ivon Hitchens

Leicester Galleries, London, where acquired by the father of the present owner in June 1952, and thence by descent

Sheffield, Graves Art Gallery, Ivon Hitchens, 31st October - 27th November 1948, cat. no.17;
London, Leicester Galleries, Ivon Hitchens: Paintings 1940 -1952, June 1952, cat. no.18;
London, Gimpel Fils, Ivon Hitchens: 7 Selected Paintings 1945-55, January 1956, cat. no.1;
London, Rutland Gallery, Landscape into Abstract: Paintings 1938-69, 12th April - 10th May 1972, cat. no.4.

Patrick Heron, Ivon Hitchens, Penguin Modern Painters, Harmondsworth, 1955, illustrated pl.3;
Alan Bowness (ed.), Ivon Hitchens, Lund Humphries, London, 1973, illustrated pl.14;
Peter Khoroche, Ivon Hitchens, Lund Humphries, Gower House, Aldershot, 2007, illustrated pl.61, p.79.

Original canvas. There are artist pinholes in the corners and to the centre of the upper and lower edges. There are one or two spots of extremely minor craquelure visible to the very outer edges of the canvas, where it pulls over the stretcher. There is an additional small spot of craquelure to the white pigment near the centre of the canvas. The surface is slightly dirty and the varnish appears discoloured. Otherwise in generally good overall condition There are a few specks of flourescence to the pinholes upper right, which may be old retouching, and the surface is covered with an opaque varnish. Held in a simple white painted wooden frame. Please telephone the department on +44 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present lot.
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In the late 1930s, Hitchens made frequent painting trips out of London to the countryside, with Sussex becoming a particular favourite. Discovering that six acres of woodland were for sale near Petworth, the family acquired these and began the construction of a studio. As an escape from wartime London this was an invaluable retreat, and when bomb damage rendered his Adelaide Road studio unusable, Hitchens, his wife Molly and son John moved permanently to Sussex.

The opportunity to engage directly with nature and landscape, through the times and seasons over a prolonged period was a boost to Hitchens, and the assurance of the work he began to produce is quite remarkable. His palette became wider, the colours deeper and stronger, and his paint handling, always striking in its facility, is notable for the extreme variety and expressive qualities he seems able to create. Having nature on his doorstep allowed Hitchens to delve into his subject to a new level. He described this process in a note around 1954:

'Setting up canvas and box in all weathers, I seek first to unravel the essential meaning of my subject, which is synonymous with its structure, and to understand my own psychological reactions to it. Next I must decide how best it can be rendered in paint, not by a literal copying of objects but by combinations and juxtapositions of lines, forms, planes, tones, colours etc., such as will have an aesthetic meaning when put down on canvas.' (The Artist, personal memorandum, c.1954)

The potential for investigating a subject in differing conditions was to become a major concern for Hitchens in these years, and from the mid 1940s onwards we see him embarking on several series of paintings. Of these, the first significant group are those painted at Terwick Mill, a quiet backwater near Midhurst. In 1944-45, Hitchens painted around twenty canvases exploring this place in all weathers, seasons and times of day. In many of this remarkable group of works we are able to see Hitchens incredible understanding of his medium and subject meld into images of such distinctive power and understanding of this very English landscape. At the heart of these paintings is the body of water that forms the millpond and, as here, the race that rushes over a pair of sluices. In Terwick Mill No.14, Waterfall, Hitchens places himself across the mill pond, the focus of the painting being the white sheet of water falling over the sluice. As the foaming water becalms across the wider pond, it becomes a mirror to the colours of sky and foliage around us, creating a space of clear light within the painting. The trees around us are in full leaf and dressed in rich greens and dense olives, suggest a late spring or summer date for the work. The whole is infused with an atmosphere of quiet tranquillity, a place replete with calm. Our position as viewer nestles into a slightly shaded and sequestered foreground and, as one looks over to the falling water, the feeling of having unexpectedly stumbled across this magical corner is strong. By his deft use of compositional planes and evocative colour, Hitchens takes this apparently simple view and makes it a repository of our own understanding of the poetry of the English landscape.