Spring still life - red bowl

Describing the early still life pictures from the 1930s, Alan Bowness comments, '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 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 ... Hitchen's colours do not remind us of Braque, and the importance to him of the flowers at the centre of these compositions distinguishes his work from that of the French painter' (A. Bowness, Ivon Hitchens, London, London, 1973, pp. 27-28).