Ivor Hitchens

Damp Autumn (1941)

Oil on Canvas

406 x 743 mm

Ivor Hitchens (1893 -1979) was an English painter best known for being a part of the artists circle known as the 'London Group'. I was recommended to take a look at his work by my Self Directed tutors. Hitchens neither painted landscape as a detached observer, nor did he abstract forms from nature, and he valued the disciplines of Cézanne too highly to allow structure to be controlled by subjective response alone. I am particularly interested in Hitchens' use of colour - though his work lies between abstract and figurative he has used different tones to provide a sense of depth. Looking at his 1941 piece 'Damp Autumn' you can see that he has not used a wide range of colours but a limited palette with subtle changes in tone - which I think gives an effective sense of depth. Unlike much of Klee's work - another artist i'm studying - Hitchens' has applied the paint in a loose but still figurative way.