Title: Indigo days
First published: 1957
Description: Over 50 years of intense artistic activity, Julian Trevelyan painted, etched and drew. His delightful memoir of his life and painting career from 1930 to 1950 was first published in 1957. It is reissued here with an illustrated study of his work during the period by Nicholas Usherwood. There is also a foreword by Raleigh Trevelyan, author, cousin and friend of the artist.

Julian Trevelyan was the only son of a 'charming eccentric' father, and nephew of the great social historian G.M. Trevelyan. His unconventional background led on to an intellectual and emotional openness which was to place him at the centre of avant garde art.

In Indigo Days he gives a highly entertaining account of what it was like to be a young radical artist in London and Paris in the 1930s. He moved to Paris in 1931 where he joined the celebrated etching school Atelier 17 run by S.W. Hayter and frequented by Miro, Max Ernst, Giacometti, Alexander Calder, Oskar Kokoschka and Picasso. In 1936, his work was chosen by Roland Penrose and Herbert Read for inclusion in their International Surrealist exhibition and he became a member of the English Surrealist Group.

He joined Tom Harrisson's Mass Observation Movement in 1937 and worked for a period in Bolton, recording numerous scenes around the Potteries, an experience which was to have a profound effect on his painting.

During the second world war he served as a camouflage officer but left the Army in 1942 following a breakdown. Trevelyan returned to London and to Durham Wharf, his home on the banks of the Thames at Chiswick. Here he discovered a new, consciously lyrical style, influenced by Bonnard and the architectural structures of Vieira da Silva. Indigo Days closes with his marriage to the artist Mary Fedden and looks forward to the second creative phase of his career.
Subjects: Artists, Biography
Places: England
People: Julian Trevelyan (1910-1988)