Art
Non Hitchens
John McEwen
It should not have escaped your notice that a retrospective of Ivon Hitchens's paintings is on view in the Diploma Galleries of the Royal Academy (till 25 April; and then to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 10 May-3 June; Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance, 16 June18 July; Ferens Art Gallery, Kingstonupon-Hull, 4 August-2 September; Castle Museum, Nottingham, 8 September-14 October). His shoulders must be aching from the weight of victors' laurels heaped upon them and the hearty back-slaps of the critics, but so they should be.
Hitchens was 86 this year, and the exhibition surveys his work in chronological order from 1932 to the present: the work, that is, for the most part, of his maturity. Almost a quarter of the pictures on view have been painted since 1973, a worthwhile tribute both to his growing virtuosity and continuing vitality. Any doubts about the suitability of the space for such an important event are dispelled at a glance. The wealth of natural light throughout, and the length and comparative narrowness of the principle gallery in particular, are a perfect setting for Hitchens's rich colour and long, horizontal canvases. These often bright colours and the overall surface designs which display them — what the artist refers to as the carpet design of his pictures (with reference, of course, to oriental rather than European carpets) — give immediate pleasure as, on closer inspection, does his subject matter. With the exception of the Chinese no culture has made so much of landscape as the English, and no English painter has put their finger on such an intrinsic part of our landscape consciousness, namely its secret, hide-'n-seek side, as Hitchens, or subjected one corner of England, West Sussex, to longer or closer scrutiny. This truth to the magic and light of English landscape at its most English — what county embodies the Englishness of England more poignantly than Sussex? — tugs at our agrarian roots, and has made him the only English modernist to achieve such broad popular acceptance. An achievement made all the more remarkable by his own indifference to such things. His devotion to painting has been positively monklike, allowing' for no worldly distraction and making him supremely a painter's painter. It is typical that the paintings in the current show done at the time of the second World war are only detectable by their dates.
Art-historically Hitchens is perhaps most honoured for applying the structural principles of Cubism to plein air landscape and, in an English landscape context, for having introduced the rhythm and colour of the fauves. But oriental art has probably had the profoundest effect upon him of all. `Some aspects of composition in the style and creation of pictures', he pnce wrote. '1. Speed 2. Golden Points 3. Apparitions 4. Transitions 5. Repetitions 6. Balance 7. Symmetry.' The Japanese principle of flown, the harmonising of dark and light — nothing to do with the observed light and shade of chiaroscuro in Western painting — underlies his method. In other words, representation of the thing seen is finally subject to the demands of the painting as an object of visual harmony analogous to music.
The frontispiece to the catalogue, number 20 in the exhibition, 'Flower Group' 1943, illustrates the meaning of this very well. To make most descriptive sense the picture should be stood vertically, it can then be clearly read as a bunch of flowers standing in a white vase on a table. This is the way Hitchens painted it, and this is the way it is hung in the exhibition.
Closer inspection, however, of the lower right-hand corner of the canvas will reveal that the picture has been signed to hang horizontally. The reason for this is that on finishing the work Hitchens found that a yellow flower on the extreme left of the composition fought against the left-to-right harmony of the painting as a whole. But, when the painting was turned on its side, this flower succumbed to and even enhanced the overall movement of the design. The description but not the character of the original was lost, so, as an after-thought, he confirmed his preference by his signature. This is a unique case — his paintings even at their most spontaneous are extremely carefully planned, often, indeed, underdrawn — but nevertheless it throws some light on his method and clearly demonstrates his order of priorities. It also shows how a Hitchens should be read if we are fully to appreciate the varying resonances, textures, rhythms and tempo of his brushstrokes: slowly, that is, from one side to the other — usually, as in a book, from left-to-right but, particularly in the later work, in contradiction of our expectations.
As a spectacle the exhibition cannot be faulted. By concentrating on the landscapes at the expense, on the whole, of the nudes, flowers and seascapes, an appropriately symphonic effect is encouraged. But the details are less satisfactory. There are several weak pictures included, which is inexcusable in a show of this kind, and, the reverse of the same coin, a sad lack of some of the artist's finest work. It would, for instance, have been reasonable to expect the whole of his masterly 'Winter Walk' series. There is not one. No sign either of the wonderful studies of `Terwick Mill', outright mas terpieces though they are. No sign of 'Trees and Bushes' 1952, one of his own particular favourites. But this does not diminish the importance of the exhibition as an event, taking place as it does at a more congenial critical period in the arts than his Tate retrospective of 1963. This time perhaps he will get his due. As an ex-pupil of the Academy Schools he should surely be made an honorary academician, but what about an OM too? Consider his lesser artistic contemporaries. Moore, who stuck intellectually in first gear round about 1935, has the OM. Nicholson, who transformed cubism into good taste, has the OM. Sutherland, who copped out much the same time as Moore and subsequently settled for the easy pickings of society portraiture, has one. Even John Piper, abstractionist turned sentimental illustrator, has a CH. Hitchens, better than the lot of them put together, has to rest content with a CBE. He will, of course, — because such things do not preoccupy him — and let's hope for many more productive years to come.
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