Almost every painting in this exhibition is one of several versions or variations on a theme, whether it be still life or landscape. Hitchens’ interest was not so much in the subject itself as in the pictorial opportunities it offered. It was therefore natural that he should want to explore the different aspects of the subject in a series of paintings.
The subject of Spring Mood no 3 is a group of plants and flowers in pots and vases placed on a table in the artist’s Hampstead studio, with a view out of the window to distant rooftops. This is one of at least three treatments of the theme. (There are, in addition, two exquisite miniature versions, each measuring 6 x 7 ins, painted in the following year, 1934.) In Spring Mood nos 1 & 3 Hitchens is concerned with the bare bones of the composition: rhythm, line and colour-shape, while in no 2 he exploits contrasts of pattern and detail. Peter Khoroche