Guildhall Art Gallery - current exhibitions

Paintings by Trevor Chamberlain(11 May – 26 July 2009)

Guildhall Art Gallery is pleased to be showing new and recent work by Trevor Chamberlain, who first exhibited here in 1970 in the annual Lord Mayor’s Art Award (in which he was a prize winner in 1976). Concentrating mostly on marine subjects, town scenes and landscapes painted en plain air , in both his oils and his watercolours Trevor Chamberlain seeks ‘to create an impression of nature and the spirit and atmosphere of a particular place, rather than a precise representation’. This exhibition of more than a hundred evocative and light-filled oil paintings and watercolours includes London subjects alongside views from as far afield as Armenia, India and Iran. Some works are available for purchase.

Born in Hertford in 1933, Trevor Chamberlain began painting at the age of 7. At 12 he enrolled in painting classes under Alfred Wright at the Ware Institute, but apart from this he had no formal art training. He worked as an architectural draughtsman until 1964, since when he has worked full time as a professional artist. He made his first painting trip abroad to Venice in 1970 and has since painted in every continent except Australia. Chamberlain has exhibited widely in London (including at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions and the Royal Watercolour Society) as well as elsewhere in the UK and overseas, and his works are held by numerous public and private collections. He is a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, the Royal Society of Marine Artists and the Wapping Group of Artists, of which he has been President, and he is also a Past President of the Chelsea Art Society. He has also published two books on oil painting – Oil Painting Pure and Simple (1987) and Oils (1993) – and one on watercolour – Trevor Chamberlain A Personal View (1999), while sixty years of painting were celebrated in 2006 with the publication of England and Beyond.