Yale Center for British Art

Creator:
Ivon Hitchens, 1893–1979, British
Title:
Dark Forest
Date:
1962
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
21 x 52 inches (53.3 x 132.1 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
Signed in paint, lower right: "Hitchens"
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
© Estate of the Artist
Accession Number:
B1986.29.4
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Subject Terms:
abstract art | movement | brushstrokes | forest
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
20th Century Paintings and Sculpture (Yale Center for British Art, 2000-01-27 - 2000-04-30)
Publications:
19th and 20th century paintings - Two London exhibitions, Illustrated London News, vol. 244, accessed June 18, 2024, p. 22, Gale Primary Sources : The Illustrated London News

Christie's sale catalogue : British and Irish Modernist paintings and sculptures from 1900 : 13 June 1986, Christie's, June 13, 1983, p. 98, lot 466, Auction Catalogues (YCBA)

Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v. 1, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)

Sotheby's sale catalogue : Modern British drawings, paintings and sculpture : 16 November 1997, Sotheby's, November 16, 1977, p. 60, lot 159, Auction Catalogues (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
During the interwar period, Ivon Hitchens exhibited with the Seven and Five Society in London, a group of young avant-garde artists, which included Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and John Piper, that sought an alternative to both the fashionable Bloomsbury Group and the dominant London Group. Although Hitchens shared their interest in abstraction, he remained committed to a tradition of English landscape painting, but inflected by his appreciation for Paul Cézanne. After his London house was hit by a bomb in 1940, Hitchens relocated to West Sussex, where he remained for the rest of his career. Here he developed a style of landscape painting typified by wide oblong canvases depicting woodland scenes, represented by a mixture of very broad and narrow brushstrokes. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:1290