The blue door of Greenleaves was one of Hitchens’ most personal and enduring subjects. He painted it in the early years after settling in Sussex and returned to it in later works. It belonged to the house and garden at the heart of his working life: an everyday feature that could be seen afresh with each change of season. In Blue Door, Winter Profusion, painted in 1972, that familiar subject becomes the starting point for an exceptionally rich arrangement of colour.

Deep blues gather across the centre and upper part of the canvas, meeting violet, pale lilac and white. Strokes of orange and yellow bring warmth to the lower edge of this winter scene. Fine lines of white and pale blue pick out details and guide the eye between its larger forms. In places, Hitchens allows the prepared canvas to remain visible, giving the surrounding paint greater clarity and intensity. These intervals are as important as the painted areas. They prevent the strong colours from closing in upon one another and allow the viewer’s eye to move through the composition. A sense of depth emerges through the relationships between shapes and gestures, rather than through conventional perspective. The blue door connects the work to a real and deeply familiar place, while the freedom of Hitchens’ late style gives that place an expressive life of its own.