Whistler is credited with coining the term Nocturne to describe his moody twilight Thames views some 60 years before Trevelyan used the title for this night view, a radically different proposition, owing more perhaps to the expressionism of Van Gogh than Whistler’s restrained and understated nocturnal paintings.

Julian Trevelyan’s Nocturne, 1954 is a typically vivid and exuberant painting, capturing the essence of London at night, a kaleidoscope of colour and light and rhythmic movement. Then as now this familiar view at the Hyde Park Corner roundabout facing west to the grand gates to Hyde Park is a chaotic free for all with taxis, buses and cars all struggling to pass through one of London’s busiest intersections. Trevelyan’s interpretation is impressionistic, spontaneous and symbolises the joie de vivre that returned to the city in the 1950s. Only a decade before the artist captured this scene London was a very different place with shrouded street lamps and dimmed car headlights. Trevelyan celebrates a city liberated from post war restrictions, a great city returning to life.

Trevelyan’s depiction of light and reflection is essential to the success of the composition. Extravagant brushstrokes loosely describe the scene, the large white starbursts dominate, the exaggerated halos of street lights in the rain at night, mimicking the fiesta fireworks he had seen on his travels around Europe. Pinpoints of bright colour indicate cars and traffic lights, nothing is static.

Julian Trevelyan first found his artistic voice in 1930s Paris amongst the Surrealists, working at Stanley Hayter’s celebrated etching studio alongside Picasso, Miro, Giacometti and others. He settled in 1935 in his famous riverside studio in Hammersmith, where he remained for the rest of his life. After war service as a camouflage artist Trevelyan embarked on extensive travels throughout Europe and North America, accompanied by his second wife the artist Mary Fedden. He was a most versatile and accomplished painter, poet, printmaker and teacher, absorbed by his deeply personal interpretation of London and Londoners, blending observation with vivid imagination.

This newly rediscovered painting was acquired in London some 50 years ago and has been in the same Scottish family ever since.

Private collection, U.K.