Sussex Canal No. 2

'Although Hitchens’ pictures have, to a remarkable degree, feeling for place and power of association, this is not something that greatly interests the painter himself: rather is it a by-product of his way of working or, more exactly, something absorbed in the course of painting the picture. For Hitchens’ whole approach to his work is a classical one, and he denies that he is a Romantic landscape painter. He is little concerned with the spirit of place and not at all with topography. He talks and writes about his painting as if it were abstract and the subject of only incidental importance. And in a way he is perfectly right’ (see A. Bowness, exhibition catalogue, Ivon Hitchens: a retrospective exhibition, Arts Council, London, 1964, n.p.).