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Julian Trevelyan R.A. (British, 1910-1988) Kiln Firing at Night 56.2 x 45.7 cm. (22 1/8 x 18 in.) image 1
Julian Trevelyan R.A. (British, 1910-1988) Kiln Firing at Night 56.2 x 45.7 cm. (22 1/8 x 18 in.) image 2
Julian Trevelyan R.A. (British, 1910-1988) Kiln Firing at Night 56.2 x 45.7 cm. (22 1/8 x 18 in.) image 3
Lot 11AR

Julian Trevelyan R.A.
(British, 1910-1988)
Kiln Firing at Night 56.2 x 45.7 cm. (22 1/8 x 18 in.)

21 June 2023, 15:00 BST
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £10,240 inc. premium

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Julian Trevelyan R.A. (British, 1910-1988)

Kiln Firing at Night
signed and dated 'Trevelyan.'43' (lower left)
oil on canvas
56.2 x 45.7 cm. (22 1/8 x 18 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
With Alex Reid & Lefevre, London
Private Collection, U.K.

Julian Trevelyan first visited Stoke-on-Trent in 1937, and immediately felt an affinity with the place. As he was to write in 1955, 'the concentration of smoking kilns, like so many monstrous bottles, the canals, the gaping chasms from which the clay had been extracted – all of these produced in my mind a ferment of ideas and I drew like one possessed' (Julian Trevelyan, Indigo Days: The Art and Memoirs of Julian Trevelyan, Scolar Press, Aldershot, 1957, pp.86-7). The town, teeming with activity, provided a rich source of inspiration – from the constant stacking of the kilns, to the crackling fires of the furnaces and the smoke that bellowed from them, everywhere he looked there was visual stimulation.

This new source of inspiration prompted a turn away from Surrealism and collage, and back to painting. This was to prove a formative experience for him, and he later commented: 'I think I was about twenty-eight [in 1938] when I found that for the first time I was painting my own pictures without trying to please anyone but myself...they were visions of my own world...and that was all that mattered. The smoking furnaces of the potteries and the desolate landscape of slag heaps and derelict slums of Stoke-on-Trent made a deep impression on me. I became myself beside the murky canals, and from then on life was easier'. (Julian Trevelyan, letter to his wife Ursula, quoted in Philip Trevelyan, Julian Trevelyan Picture Language, Lund Humphries, Farnham and Burlington, 2013, p.118).

In 1939, however, War broke out again and in the autumn of that year he joined Stanley William Hayter working on industrial camouflage, taking on commissions to conceal factories from enemy aircraft. In October 1941, Trevelyan received his call-up and became a Lieutenant in the Corps of Royal Engineers. Like all those serving in the army, Trevelyan was obliged to wear an identification disc in case he was killed in service, each one carrying the name, number and religion of each soldier – characteristically true to his artistic calling, he wrote 'Surrealist' under the latter and noted: 'I used to wonder what rites would have been performed at my burial by a conscientious commanding officer' (Julian Trevelyan, op. cit., pp.138-9).

During his time in the army, which included a tour of duty to North Africa and the Middle East, opportunities and materials for painting were limited, and his mental health deteriorated, eventually resulting in him being returned to civilian life after spending time being treated in a north London institution. From 1943, he was able to return to painting and significantly to his richest source of pre-war inspiration, Stoke-on-Trent, which forms the subject of the present lot. Evocatively titled Kiln Firing at Night, here the dark kiln is dramatically lit from within by flames that lick the sides, orange sparks visibly escaping amidst the smoke that bellows from the chimney. Fed by three men who are evidently hard at work, stripped down to just trousers and caps in the intense heat, stoking the fires and carrying coal to feed it - with further kilns visible in the background - there is a sense of the relentless cycle of work that would have kept the potteries in production at all hours of the day and night.

Representing a welcome return to an important subject – and fond pre-war memories of freedom and productivity, uninhibited by camouflage or touring duties and the monotony of army life – Kiln Firing at Night hails from an important period in Trevelyan's life when he could return to the sanctuary of Durham Wharf. Life, however, was still complicated by the ongoing war – and indeed in late 1943 a large unexploded bomb landed in the garden next to Durham Wharf during the night, which must have been doubly alarming given the recent arrival in August of that year of their son, Philip. The present lot thus shows the artist's determination to carry on amid the challenges of life during the war, and his continued passion for painting.

Additional information

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