Trevor Newton
At
Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk, On
Saturday 21st November 2009 “Mr Newton’s aim is not to render a building with painstaking accuracy but to capture its spirit - its sheer magic. The resulting works are intensely dramatic, even theatrical.” Country Life August 2009
“While many of his contemporaries at Cambridge were Footlighting or rowing, Trevor Newton seemed to spend much of his time drawing and painting. His specialities then were lavish invitations for May Week parties, illustrated menus for Club and Society dinners, posters and programmes for plays and concerts, along with a highly individual line in architectural fantasy drawn for its own sake and for the amusement of his friends. He managed to combine the frivolous and the Baroque in a curious and most engaging manner; Osbert Lancaster meets Tiepolo. Trevor is still drawing and painting as passionately as ever and though the content of his work may be more serious, in style and execution it still has all the youthful energy and verve which characterised it almost thirty years ago. Many of Trevor’s old friends and University contemporaries still have an original early Newton or two proudly displayed on their walls. This Exhibition is an opportunity for those who live in Norfolk to become acquainted with - and to acquire - some fine examples of his later style. Snap them up while you still can…” Stephen Fry
Trevor Newton was born in Lancashire, England in 1959. He studied History of Art at Cambridge University and later became the first full-time teacher of the subject at Eton College. Trevor Newton’s work has been the subject of several articles in Country Life magazine and has been published by the Oxford University Press, The Independent on Sunday and The Literary Review. Since 2001, Exhibitions have been held at the headquarters of the Georgian Group and at various venues in London, Oxford and Chester. In 2004 the artist was commissioned by Christie’s to provide fifty large-scale watercolour drawings to illustrate the catalogue of one of that season’s main sales at their South Kensington auction rooms. The resulting works were later exhibited at the Viewing and formed a part of the sale itself. All were sold. In April 2007 his extensive and unusual Australian travel journals - an illustrated account of tens of thousands of miles of travel around colonial Australia - were the subject of a major, seven-page feature in Outback, the country’s leading magazine of rural life and heritage. ~~
Moonlight and Moat Mist at Oxburgh Hall
Sunshine, Oxburgh Hall
Moonlight in Venice
Mist clearing at Eton College
Middle Temple Hall, London
The Long Gallery, Syon House
The Cloisters, Gloucester Cathedral
Extract from an Appreciation of the artist by the distinguished architectural historian Professor David Watkin of the University of Cambridge: “Trevor Newton has developed over the last few years into one of the most individual, lively and atmospheric of all English recorders of buildings and interiors. His work has a vivacious and spontaneous quality with a memorable handling of line and mass, conveyed through unexpected colours and textures. He will become a cult figure.”
Trevor Newton writes: “Most of this Exhibition is to to do with England, more specifically with man-made England. Just as I like the idea of putting a lot of building onto a relatively small piece of paper, I like the idea trying to condense a lot of Englishness into one exhibition. Our not very large part of these not very extensive islands is jampacked with things, with objects to see at every turn; not just fine buildings and monuments, but humbler items which nevertheless bear a decidedly English stamp. Carved pew ends and fonts, crumbling barns, gaudily painted fairground horses, wrought iron gates - all of these can be as characteristically English as the grandest of country houses or the most sweeping of landscaped parks - perhaps more so.”
For more information on the work of Trevor Newton please get in touch with: Nicholas Bowlby, Owl House, Poundgate, East Sussex. TN22 4DE. 01892 667809. info@nicholasbowlby.co.uk. www.nicholasbowlby.co.uk.