Firwood Ride, variation 1, autumn

‘I aim to recreate the truth of nature by making my own song about it’, wrote Ivon Hitchens, who painted the wooded Sussex countryside where he lived.

In series such as ‘Firwood Ride’, Hitchens attempted to capture the look of the landscape through the seasons – each variation a fresh observation of shifting colours and light patterns. He usually worked on-site, laying rich colours over a white underlayer with broad sweeps of the brush.

Hitchens typically painted wide canvases – too wide to view in a glance. Here, we must look from left to right, background to foreground, as if taking in a real landscape.