Orange lily

IVON HITCHENS CBE

London 1893 - 1979 Petworth

Ref: CC 167

Orange lily

Signed lower left: Hitchens; signed and inscribed on the artist's labels attached to the stretcher: Orange Lily / by Ivon Hitchens / Greenleaves / Lavington Common / Petworth Sussex / CB Stevenson / Laing Art Gallery / Newcastle on Tyne

Oil on canvas: 29 ¾ x 25 ½ in / 75.6 x 64.8 cm

Frame size: 38 ⅞ x 34 ¼ in / 98.7 x 87 cm

In a coloured, gesseod and wax-polished frame

Painted circa 1933

Provenance:

The Redfern Gallery, London, May 1948;

private collection, acquired from the above

Exhibited:

Waddington Galleries, London (label attached to the reverse, numbered 7, details untraced)

South Africa, South African National Gallery, Friends of SANG, no.38 (label attached to the reverse, details untraced)

Ivon Hitchens’ Orange lily is a glorious, semi-abstract arrangement of summer flowers, balancing subtle, silvery shades of green, luminous white and pale pink, with vivid accents of striking orange, deep, russet red and yellow gold. The graceful recurving petals of the impressive Tiger lilies take centre stage, with glowing, ethereal Madonna lilies above, and bright, sun-like marigolds and nasturtium below. Red/orange and magenta lily anthers in rich arabesques project from the picture plane alongside luscious petals painted with a loaded brush.

The complex construction of shallow space with overlapping, flattened planes of colour, demonstrates the influence of Georges Braque and Paul Cézanne and anticipates the greater abstraction of Hitchens’ work in the late 1930s. At the time it was painted, Hitchens was living and working in Hampstead at 169 Adelaide Road where ‘the whitewashed walls reflected every scrap of light on to the jugs and jars and patterned cloths that appear and reappear in the pictures of the next few years, and there would always be growing things: plants and flowers and two small chestnut trees in pots.’[1] It seems likely that Orange lily, painted in Hitchens’ bright, Hampstead studio, looks through glass doors onto a garden courtyard, blurring the boundary between interior and exterior. Hitchens brings to this subject a sensuous, vibrant handling of paint which combines with an audacious use of colour and a steep, cropped perspective to create an extraordinarily enthralling composition.

[1] Peter Khoroche, Ivon Hitchens, Andre Deutsch, London 1990, p.27.