- 116
Ivon Hitchens
Estimate
50,000 - 80,000 GBP
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Description
- Ivon Hitchens
- Terwick Mill, No.4, Stormcloud
- signed
- oil on canvas
- 40.5 by 91.5cm.; 16 by 36in.
- Executed in 1944.
Provenance
Leicester Galleries, London
Howard Bliss
Leicester Galleries, London, where acquired by W.S. Adams in 1950, and thence by descent to the present owner
Howard Bliss
Leicester Galleries, London, where acquired by W.S. Adams in 1950, and thence by descent to the present owner
Exhibited
London, Leicester Galleries, Paintings by Ivon Hitchens, March 1947, cat. no.2;
London, Leicester Galleries, 'From Gainsborough to Hitchens', A Selection of Paintings and Drawings from the Howard Bliss Collection, January 1950, cat. no.101 (as Terrick Mill - Storm-cloud).
London, Leicester Galleries, 'From Gainsborough to Hitchens', A Selection of Paintings and Drawings from the Howard Bliss Collection, January 1950, cat. no.101 (as Terrick Mill - Storm-cloud).
Condition
Original canvas, the canvas undulates slightly in the bottom right and left corners.
The work appears in excellent overall condition, with strong colours throughout.
Ultraviolet light reveals no obvious signs of fluorescence or retouchings.
Housed behind glass in a thick, ornate plaster frame, unexamined out of frame.
Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
Catalogue Note
The Terwick Mill paintings of 1944 through to 1945, of which there are some twenty different versions, are amongst the most highly sought-after works by Hitchens from the period when, for many collectors and critics, he had truly hit his stride as a painter, perfecting the effortless elision of the figurative and the abstract that was to become his own unique contribution to the fabric of Post-War British art.
The seeds of this highly personal vision were sown in the 1930s, where his landscapes already begin to break down into loose arrays of colour, tone and form, with the raw unpainted ground of the canvas allowed to stand as a compositional element in its own right, both adding a sense of airiness whilst simultaneously asserting the flatness – and thus abstract nature – of the painted surface around it. Yet it was after Hitchens’ studio was bombed in 1940 and he – along with his wife and infant son – left London to live in a gipsy caravan hauled onto a recently purchased patch of woodland in deepest Sussex, that he became fully immersed in the rhythms and patterns of the landscape. The lightness – of touch and of colour – of the Thirties works gives way to a richness and depth – purples, deep umbers, inky black-blues – as Hitchens experienced both the privations and liberation of living (virtually) outdoors.
Terwick Mill lay on the other side of Midhurst, a few miles upstream from Iping. Like Monet with his Haystacks or Rouen Cathedral, Hitchens painted the millrace, its pool and the surrounding woodland in every kind of weather and at all times of day. In doing so, the motif becomes merely a formal device, in a way an abstract painter might choose the circle or the square: what is important is how subtle changes of colour and tone can evoke different emotional responses, in both artist and viewer. In the Terwick Mill series, Hitchens also explores ‘the in and out of spaces’ (to use a title from one of his later paintings), the evocative shifts of light to dark, open and hidden. In this he references the Japanese visual concept of nōtan (literally: dense–sparse) in which light and dark colours are placed side-by-side, in a way that is more allusive and non-representational than Western perspective or chiaroscuro. The source of his understanding of nōtan came from his 1916 copy of Arthur Wesley Dow's Composition, A Series of Exercises in Art Structure, first published in 1899 – a book that was to sustain Hitchens’ painting practice throughout his career and to the very edges of gestural abstraction in his later works.
As Hitchens wrote to the collector Howard Bliss, one of his most important early patrons and the original owner of the present work, ‘it is not the subject that truly interests me, but the many possible ways, and finally, the only possible way of expressing it. Setting up my 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. My method usually is to paint a quick “sketch”, then to work out a careful, well-knit design, then to destroy this and start again, painting freely, regardless of the literal proportions of forms because of the way colour reactions of space and form tend to destroy or cut across the actual edges of forms. All the while there should be a dialogue between artist and canvas, so that the picture grows from both ends, like stalactite and stalagmite’ (quoted in Peter Khoroche, Ivon Hitchens, London, 1990, p.52).
The seeds of this highly personal vision were sown in the 1930s, where his landscapes already begin to break down into loose arrays of colour, tone and form, with the raw unpainted ground of the canvas allowed to stand as a compositional element in its own right, both adding a sense of airiness whilst simultaneously asserting the flatness – and thus abstract nature – of the painted surface around it. Yet it was after Hitchens’ studio was bombed in 1940 and he – along with his wife and infant son – left London to live in a gipsy caravan hauled onto a recently purchased patch of woodland in deepest Sussex, that he became fully immersed in the rhythms and patterns of the landscape. The lightness – of touch and of colour – of the Thirties works gives way to a richness and depth – purples, deep umbers, inky black-blues – as Hitchens experienced both the privations and liberation of living (virtually) outdoors.
Terwick Mill lay on the other side of Midhurst, a few miles upstream from Iping. Like Monet with his Haystacks or Rouen Cathedral, Hitchens painted the millrace, its pool and the surrounding woodland in every kind of weather and at all times of day. In doing so, the motif becomes merely a formal device, in a way an abstract painter might choose the circle or the square: what is important is how subtle changes of colour and tone can evoke different emotional responses, in both artist and viewer. In the Terwick Mill series, Hitchens also explores ‘the in and out of spaces’ (to use a title from one of his later paintings), the evocative shifts of light to dark, open and hidden. In this he references the Japanese visual concept of nōtan (literally: dense–sparse) in which light and dark colours are placed side-by-side, in a way that is more allusive and non-representational than Western perspective or chiaroscuro. The source of his understanding of nōtan came from his 1916 copy of Arthur Wesley Dow's Composition, A Series of Exercises in Art Structure, first published in 1899 – a book that was to sustain Hitchens’ painting practice throughout his career and to the very edges of gestural abstraction in his later works.
As Hitchens wrote to the collector Howard Bliss, one of his most important early patrons and the original owner of the present work, ‘it is not the subject that truly interests me, but the many possible ways, and finally, the only possible way of expressing it. Setting up my 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. My method usually is to paint a quick “sketch”, then to work out a careful, well-knit design, then to destroy this and start again, painting freely, regardless of the literal proportions of forms because of the way colour reactions of space and form tend to destroy or cut across the actual edges of forms. All the while there should be a dialogue between artist and canvas, so that the picture grows from both ends, like stalactite and stalagmite’ (quoted in Peter Khoroche, Ivon Hitchens, London, 1990, p.52).