The painter in the woods

We're used to stories of famous artists living in chilly Paris garrets or New York lofts; less so, perhaps, caravans in rural Sussex. But this is where celebrated painter Ivon Hitchens – whose work is held in the Tate and many other public collections – lived and worked for 40 years until his death in 1979.

Hitchens, whose gloriously colourful paintings (like Red Centre, 1972, pictured right) command increasingly high prices at auction and who will be celebrated this summer with exhibitions at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester and at the Garden Museum in London, moved to Lavington Common, outside Petworth, in 1940, after his Hampstead studio was bombed.

Educated at Bedales and the Royal Academy Schools, Hitchens had become a founder of the Seven and Five Society, a group of abstract artists that included Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. But Hitchens was drawn to the countryside and in 1939 had bought six acres of woodland near Petworth to use as a painting retreat, not realising that a year later he would be towing a caravan there with horses, to set up home with his musician wife Mollie and young son, John. 

The move was to impact dramatically on his work, as Hitchens immersed himself in the landscape, interpreting the surrounding woodlands, flowers and ponds through the prism of the changing seasons and leaf-filtered light. He experimented with structure and ever more abstract forms, developing his panoramic style. From then on, the artist rarely left his woodland home, something that Andrew Lambirth, curator of the Garden Museum show, believes, ironically, afforded Hitchens a huge creative freedom. 

Over the years, the family added to the cramped caravan with a studio, and eventually a house, which they called Greenleaves. Mollie created a courtyard garden of flowerbeds filled with poppies, sunflowers and dahlias, which became a great source of inspiration. And what had begun as a temporary solution to a wartime crisis became the defining feature of Ivon Hitchens’ life – and his riotously colourful, prolific work.

Ivon Hitchens: Space through Colour is at the Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, until October 13 2019. 

This article was taken from the Summer 2019 edition of the Goodwood Magazine.