Evening pool

'Evening pool' was painted in the grounds of Hitchens home at Lavington Common near Petworth, Sussex; the property had two small artificial ponds near the house, the Downs visible in the distance. Hitchens and his wife Mollie moved there in 1940 after their London home was damaged by a bomb during World War II. In the late 1930s Hitchens had frequently painted in Sussex, after the move the woodlands there became his main subject matter.

Hitchens worked outdoors, directly from nature and often painted using a horizontal double square format as this encourages the viewers’ eye to move from left to right.

Hitchens was formally trained attending the Royal Academy of Arts and while there is evidence of the influences of traditional English landscape painting in his work, his interest in modern art especially the work of Cezanne and Braque is demonstrated through his use of blocks of colour, space and depth.