Ivon Hitchens 'Barlavington II'

Ivon Hitchens (1893–1979) is widely regarded as the outstanding English landscape painter of the 20th Century. The only child of two artistic parents, his father Alfred Hitchens was a landscape and portrait painter of some note who regularly exhibited at The Royal Academy of Arts, his identity as a painter is inextricably linked to the Sussex landscape where he lived and painted most of his life. Born and raised in London, Hitchens was an early member of the avant-garde Seven and Five Society, regularly exhibiting alongside Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Henry Moore. However, when his studio in Hampstead was obliterated in the Blitz at the outset of World War Two, the artist exchanged the cultural milieu of London for the self-imposed isolation of rural Sussex, where he would live and paint until his death in 1979. His retreat from London to Sussex gave rise to an extraordinary body of paintings that were radical in spirit despite their roots in the traditional English countryside.

Barlavington is a small village and civil parish in the Chichester district of West Sussex, just a few kilometres from the artist’s home and studio in Lavington Common. Whilst the artist’s earlier works were influenced by Parisian post-cubism and are fundamentally representational, Barlavington II is typical of the artist’s signature, mature style, showcasing his penchant for animated brushwork, structure and single-stroke flourishes. Increasingly the artist came to favour narrow rectangular canvases, believing the panoramic format could convey the sensation of passing time, what he called ‘eye-music’, as the picture unfolded across the canvas before the viewer’s eye. As critic Andrew Lambirth remarked: “When you look at Hitchens’ landscapes, you’re also looking at rhythm and different divisions going through the image. That’s why he favoured working on long, thin canvases, because they could be split up into three or four sections that played out visually like movements in a symphony.”