# Ivon Hitchens artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/ivon-hitchens/
Profile generated: 2026-05-08T12:52:45.833Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1893-03-03
- Death date: 1979-08-29
- Nationality: British, English
- Movements: London Group, Modern British Painting
- Common media: oil on canvas, watercolour, gouache, drawing

## About Ivon Hitchens

Ivon Hitchens (1893–1979) was a British painter celebrated for his vivid, broadly brushed landscapes and woodland scenes. Born in London and trained at the Royal Academy of Arts, he began exhibiting in the 1920s and became an active member of the London Group during the 1930s. After his London home was destroyed in the Blitz in 1940, Hitchens relocated to a patch of woodland on Lavington Common in Sussex, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. This move proved transformational: the surrounding forest became his defining subject, painted in expansive colour-field compositions that blended observation with abstraction. His work is held by major institutions including Tate and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Hitchens came from a family of painters — his father Alfred and his son John both pursued careers in art.

## Common works and media

Hitchens's output includes oil paintings on canvas and board, watercolours, gouaches, and drawings. His most characteristic works are horizontal-format landscape and woodland compositions rendered in bold, flat strokes of saturated colour. Flower studies, interior scenes, and mural-scale decorative paintings also appear in his oeuvre. Prints are not a major part of his production; the majority of works encountered at auction are unique works on canvas or paper.

## Market and appraisal context

Ivon Hitchens is a well-established figure in the Modern British art market, with a substantial auction history spanning oil paintings, watercolours, gouaches, and drawings. Large-scale oils from his mature Sussex woodland period tend to attract the strongest interest at auction. Key factors affecting appraisal include the work's medium and scale, its date and period (pre-war London or post-war Sussex), provenance quality, exhibition history, and condition. Works on paper — watercolours and gouaches — appear regularly and are typically more accessible than major canvases. Collectors should rely on documented provenance, condition reports, and comparable public auction results when evaluating individual pieces.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine artist identity research from museum, library-authority, and scholarly sources with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. For Ivon Hitchens, identity data is drawn from Tate, the RKD, the Getty ULAN, VIAF, the Library of Congress, and Wikidata.

## Sources

- RKD (Netherlands Institute for Art History): https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/38603
- Tate: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/ivon-hitchens-1291
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivon_Hitchens
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q14866886
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500032784
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/74026498/
- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n84163179
- The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/artists/66613