Ivon HitchensForest Edge No. 2 1944

In the 1920s and 1930s Hitchens participated in progressive artists’ societies and experimented with pure abstraction. His definitive return to landscape subjects corresponded with his move to Sussex after a bomb destroyed his London studio in 1940. Settling first with his family in a gypsy caravan in Lavington Common, near Petworth, he turned his focus to the local landscape in all its seasons and conditions. In this work, broad sweeps of damp, autumn colours lead the viewer’s gaze down a series of deep arboreal vistas.