Floral Still Life

Describing the still life pictures from 1932-33, Alan Bowness (loc. cit.) comments 'flowers and other objects on a table in a room with furniture and perhaps cushions and covers around. The disparate elements are translated into coloured patches which are held within the general structure of the composition. Hitchens designs these pictures with increasing freedom: the lines and coloured forms become progressively more difficult to identify with their visual sources. There is evidence in the pictures to suggest that Hitchens was interested in the recent work of Georges Braque, especially the great still life compositions of the late 1920s and early 1930s. This was an enthusiasm he shared with Ben Nicholson: for both of them it was Braque, rather than Matisse or Picasso, who had most to offer the English painter'.