|
Albums containing "Hitchens" |
|
|
|
|
Items containing "Hitchens" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From Album: Hitchens Ivon
John By Jordan no2 1942
KEYWORDS: Sold
John by Jordan no 2 1942 Signed lower right Signed dated & inscribed on stretcher label Oil on canvas 29 1/4 x 16 1/4 in : 74 x 41 cm
Exhibited Leicester Galleries August 1944 no 132 Tate Gallery Retrospective 1963 no 29
In August 1940 Hitchens’ studio at 169 Adelaide Road, Hampstead was damaged by a bomb. He and his wife, together with John, their four-month-old son, moved permanently to Lavington Common, near Petworth in West Sussex, where at first they lived in a caravan which they had bought the year before.
‘Jordan’ was the name of a tin bath, stowed under the caravan when not in use, and the group of John by Jordan paintings are intimate portraits of mother and baby son. The life they depict is one of peace and primal innocence in a sunlit forest glade. Both the subject and its treatment – rich colour and bold brushmarks – express a joyful affirmation in the completest contrast to the anxiety and deprivation of wartime.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From Album: Hitchens, Ivon 1893-1979
Cineraria Composition
KEYWORDS: Sold
Cineraria Composition 1934 Signed & dated lower left Estate stamp verso Oil on canvas 25 x 32 1/2 in : 63 x 83 cm
Here Hitchens focuses on the central plant-pot of Spring Mood no 3 and takes reductive abstraction a stage further than in the earlier painting. 1934-7 were
the years in which he pushed his experiments in abstraction as far as they would ever go, culminating in Coronation 1937 (Tate Coll).
It is worth recalling that 1934 was the year of Ben Nicholson’s first white reliefs, and that the following years up to the outbreak of war were for him too the period of furthest abstraction, but that even in Nicholson’s work pure abstraction at no time wholly ousted figuration.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From Album: Hitchens, Ivon 1893-1979
Outflow from a Lake
KEYWORDS: Available
Outflow from a Lake 1960 Signed lower left signed dated & inscribed on stretcher label Oil on canvas 17 x 58 1/2 in : 43 x 149 cm
Warnford Water, a secluded, tree-fringed lake on a private estate in Hampshire, provides the archetypal subject-matter for a Hitchens painting: a long lake receding into the distance (far right), a water-race in the foreground, a trout-pool (just left of centre at the lower edge), and a stream flowing out of the pool, leading the eye gently leftwards out of the picture. The motif provided material for two series of paintings (1959-60) in which these four main components were given varying emphasis, depending on the focus of interest or the changing weather and time of day. In this variation on the theme equal value is given to each component in a wide, all-inclusive panorama (note the ratio of length to height, almost 31/2 to 1). Other variations concentrate on a single component, subordinating or even eliminating the others.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From Album: Hitchens, Ivon 1893-1979
Statue in Courtyard
KEYWORDS: Available
Statue in Courtyard circa 1959 Oil on canvas 33 x 60 in : 84 x 152 cm
A sculpted female torso in a studio interior was the subject of a painting shown
at Hitchens’ first solo exhibition in 1925. Fifty years later the presence of a statue in a landscape painting, lending it an extra dimension and mystery, still appealed to the artist (eg. A Sibylline Courtyard 1974 in the Courtauld Institute collection).
There is certainly an extra dimension of mystery in the present painting, since
the statue depicted in it is in fact based on a living model, while the river and buildings in the left half seem to be drawn from the imagination.
Laying aside the probably unanswerable question of sources, let us accept the painting for what it is: a complex and powerful composition which, somewhat against the odds, imposes itself on the imagination.
Both halves of the picture provide a welcome reminder of the too easily overlooked element of drawing in Hitchens’ work. On the left we get a rare glimpse of the detailed structure, or armature, that underlies the sweeping brushstrokes and patches of colour in most of his works; on the right an
example of his fluent and vital figure drawing, which can be seen in the many
ink or charcoal studies he made in preparation for his large mural paintings
in the 1950s and early ‘60s.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From Album: Hitchens, Ivon 1893-1979
Foliage by Water no 3
KEYWORDS: Available
Foliage by Water no 3 1962 Signed lower right signed dated & inscribed on stretcher label Oil on canvas 17 1/2 x 58 1/4 in : 44 x 148 cm
Exhibited Tate Gallery Retrospective 1963 no 152
This painting and six others of the same subject were shown together at the
Tate retrospective of Hitchens’ work in 1963. They hung in the last room and
one wonders how many visitors, having already seen one hundred and fifty exhibits, will have had the patience and stamina to compare and contrast
these latest masterworks. Yet here was a rare opportunity to study Hitchens’ method, appreciate his aims, and marvel at his inventiveness.
Of the entire series of twelve paintings no 3 is the most daringly economical. The two competing focuses of interest are the sweeping arc on the left and the partially obscured blue diamond on the right. But even as one contemplates these simple geometries, the flat screens of colour, superimposed on one another, create space and recession: the arc becomes a tree-bordered
shoreline; in the background rises the barrier of a forest plantation; and above are the pale blue, thinly clouded skies of spring. A smaller arc, over the blue diamond, echoes the larger and sets up a rhythm. By such seemingly simple gestures Hitchens recreates his experience of a particular landscape while at the same time constructing an independently satisfying pattern on the canvas. Holding the two in equilibrium is Hitchens’ magical secret and the secret of
the painting’s perennial freshness and mystery.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From Album: Hitchens, Ivon 1893-1979
Spring Mood no.3
KEYWORDS: Ivon Hitchens
sold
1 Spring Mood no 3 1933 Estate stamp verso Oil on canvas 28 x 40 in : 71 x 102 cm
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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From Album: Hitchens, Ivon 1893-1979
Girl In Boat no.2
KEYWORDS: Girl In Boat no.2
sold
1938 Signed lower right Estate stamp verso Oil on canvas 22 x 24 in : 56 x 61 cm
Hitchens made regular visits to Suffolk throughout the 1930s and the paintings he made there form a distinctive group within his work as a whole. This lyrical piece was painted while he and his wife were staying at Holbrook on the Shotley Peninsula, not far from Ipswich. It is one of at least three versions of the subject, made in the intervals between work on the more ambitious Holbrook Pools in the double-square horizontal format that he had adopted two years earlier.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From Album: Hitchens, Ivon 1893-1979
Boat and Foliage
KEYWORDS: sold
Boat and Foliage in Five Chords no 3 1970 Signed & dated lower left signed dated & inscribed on stretcher label Oil on canvas 24 x 64 in : 61 x 163 cm
The challenge Hitchens set himself in this series was to reconcile the vertical eye-movement which he ‘orchestrated’ in five colour ‘chords’, with the more sweeping horizontal ‘rhythms’. When talking about his work, he was apt to use such musical analogies, which is natural if one wishes, as he did, to emphasize the abstract, constructive aspects of a painting, rather than the representational. In the first version the five vertical chords divide the painting into strongly contrasting sections of colour-shapes. This third version is much looser, with vertical and horizontal movement in perfect counterpoint, as intended.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From Album: Hitchens, Ivon 1893-1979
KEYWORDS: Sold
IVON Hitchens CBE
1893 - 1979
Picnic, Sizewell 1933
Oil on canvas
Estate stamp verso
20 1/2 x 30 ins 52 x 76 cms
|
| Provenance: |
The artist1s estate
|
Matching descriptions:
IVON Hitchens CBE
1893 - 1979
Picnic, Sizewell 1933
Oil on canvas
Estate stamp verso
20 1/2 x 30 ins 52 x 76 cms
|
| Provenance: |
The artist¹s estate
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From Album: Hitchens, Ivon 1893-1979
Ivon Hitchens
1893-1979
KEYWORDS: sold
Ivon Hitchens 1893-1979
Decoration for a Music Room 1933
Signed and dated, Tempera and silver leaf on canvas
Size: 80 1/2 x 65 1/2 ins
Provenance: Artist's family
Exhibited: Alex Reid & Levevre 1933 no 32
|
|
|
