Still Life with Lilies

Although this, like lot 335, is an early flower painting, it has a similar degree of abstraction to it when compared to the more representational 1931 Azaleas. By 1935, Hitchens had moved into one of his most radical and abstract periods (which lasted until 1937), reducing flowers to blobs of colour in a pattern which took less notice of setting and context than it did of outline and balance of colours. Hitchens loved painting flowers and found them often as challenging and satisfying as a landscape, though usually requiring a smaller format. He wrote: ‘One can read into a good flower picture the same problems that one faces with a landscape, near and far, meanings and movements of shapes and brush strokes.’ Notice the different weights and densities of brush mark in Still Life with Lilies: Hitchens used up to 100 brushes at any one time, from broad decorators’ brushes to the finest sable or squirrel. Here he revels in the different marks he could make, testing the amount of visual information they contain against their value in the overall design. The resulting loosely-painted and airy composition is a lasting delight.

A.L.