.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The forest rides that surrounded his home in West Sussex were a favourite motif of Hitchens. His inventive variations on this theme are vividly described by Patrick Heron in his essay on the artist in the series Penguin Modern Painters (1955).
In Yellow Glade No. 1 the alternating lights and darks of the forest floor inescapably draw one down the tunnel of trees to a solitary birch, standing in its patch of shade and silhouetted against a grey winter sky. Just as inevitably one returns to explore the glade in the foreground, dominated by another leafless tree that 'answers' the distant birch as it thrusts up through the canopy of branches to break out of the picture. Vertical screens of grey and green-grey, contrasting with horizontal patches of brown, shut off any exit to the right, and on the left, where there is no more than a hint of another tree-lined, diminishing perspective, the eye is held at the picture surface. There is no choice but to let oneself be lured once again down the avenue, this time, perhaps, pausing to look more closely at the trees, particularly those on one's left.
Thus, by artfully playing off shapes and colours against one another and by varying the weight of pigment and the direction of brushstroke, Hitchens gently but firmly guides us over the entire canvas, while at the same time recreating out of this humble, unespecial scene an immediately recognizable experience of winter woodland.
P.K.
The present painting was formally in the collection of Mrs Gwen Mullins. Mrs Mullins was a weaver and painter, and a close friend of Ivon Hitchens and his family. They lived near the artist in West Sussex, and he was a frequent visitor to the Mullins house.
In Yellow Glade No. 1 the alternating lights and darks of the forest floor inescapably draw one down the tunnel of trees to a solitary birch, standing in its patch of shade and silhouetted against a grey winter sky. Just as inevitably one returns to explore the glade in the foreground, dominated by another leafless tree that 'answers' the distant birch as it thrusts up through the canopy of branches to break out of the picture. Vertical screens of grey and green-grey, contrasting with horizontal patches of brown, shut off any exit to the right, and on the left, where there is no more than a hint of another tree-lined, diminishing perspective, the eye is held at the picture surface. There is no choice but to let oneself be lured once again down the avenue, this time, perhaps, pausing to look more closely at the trees, particularly those on one's left.
Thus, by artfully playing off shapes and colours against one another and by varying the weight of pigment and the direction of brushstroke, Hitchens gently but firmly guides us over the entire canvas, while at the same time recreating out of this humble, unespecial scene an immediately recognizable experience of winter woodland.
P.K.
The present painting was formally in the collection of Mrs Gwen Mullins. Mrs Mullins was a weaver and painter, and a close friend of Ivon Hitchens and his family. They lived near the artist in West Sussex, and he was a frequent visitor to the Mullins house.