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拍品專文
When Ivon Hitchens was invited to contribute some words about his two paintings in the book Recent British Paintings, Peter Stuyvesant Foundation Collection published in 1968, as an older painter in the group of artists represented, he did not feel any verbal explanation was necessary and that perhaps his work and attitudes were familiar enough. Alan Bowness, however, noted that “the landscapes … are characteristic pictures, in which an artist’s sensations of a particular place and space are translated directly into an ordered sequence of colours on the flat canvas, but the later one is notably more free in colour and handling”. The ‘later one’ is Blue Lake and Sky, the present work.
By this stage in his artistic life Hitchens was considered one of the leading British artists of the Twentieth Century. From his earlier beginnings with the modernist art movement, as a member of the 7 & 5 Society and then later the London Group, as well as the representation in important exhibitions, including Objective Abstraction Hitchens was highly regarded by other artists. This is all the more interesting bearing in mind that from 1940 onwards when he moved to Sussex, he pursued his own path without feeling the need to engage in artistic debate.
In Blue Lake and Sky he has captured the essence of the painting’s title with beautifully fluid and expressive brush strokes. At the same time demonstrating a sureness of touch in the balance of colour and composition in the painting, to demonstrate that he was at the peak of his powers. Writing about the aim and nature of his painting in 1931, Hitchens stated “it is the linear, tonal and colour harmony and rhythm of nature which interests me – what I call the ‘musical appearance of thing’ (in a way the reality of their soul-essence, if there is such an unpopular thing in this mechanistic age)”. Over thirty years later, his comments then were still as relevant when he painted Blue Lake and Sky in 1965.
By this stage in his artistic life Hitchens was considered one of the leading British artists of the Twentieth Century. From his earlier beginnings with the modernist art movement, as a member of the 7 & 5 Society and then later the London Group, as well as the representation in important exhibitions, including Objective Abstraction Hitchens was highly regarded by other artists. This is all the more interesting bearing in mind that from 1940 onwards when he moved to Sussex, he pursued his own path without feeling the need to engage in artistic debate.
In Blue Lake and Sky he has captured the essence of the painting’s title with beautifully fluid and expressive brush strokes. At the same time demonstrating a sureness of touch in the balance of colour and composition in the painting, to demonstrate that he was at the peak of his powers. Writing about the aim and nature of his painting in 1931, Hitchens stated “it is the linear, tonal and colour harmony and rhythm of nature which interests me – what I call the ‘musical appearance of thing’ (in a way the reality of their soul-essence, if there is such an unpopular thing in this mechanistic age)”. Over thirty years later, his comments then were still as relevant when he painted Blue Lake and Sky in 1965.