Continental Interiors

(Catalogue nos. 53-57)

As an undergraduate, Trevor spent a year on the Continent, including some months in Southern Germany where he visited many of the most celebrated castles, libraries and palaces, in particular those of Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845-1886).  Their theatricality and their overt display of wealth and splendor still informs much of his work.  Ludwig’s lavishly decorated bedrooms, often the main focus of his residences, left an indelible impression on Trevor and he returns again and again to their theatrical panache.  Thus, Ludwig’s enormous canopied bed in Linderhof Palace (cat. no. 53), decorated with swaths of royal blue velvet, ornate gilded carving and flanked by two massive candelabras, is strongly reminiscent of a stage set.  Similar in effect but – at least in comparison – lower-key, is Trevor’s drawing of Ludwig’s red bedroom in Herrenchiemsee Castle (cat. no. 54), where the king stayed for only a few days in 1885, before his suicide by drowning the following year.

Naturally, Trevor also spent time in Vienna and the grand Prunksaal of the Austrian National Library (formerly the Imperial Library), in the Hofburg Palace, provides the setting for no.  55.  In this light-infused interior, Trevor loosely indicates the bookcases that house the library of the great general Prince Eugene of Savoy, and describes with characteristic verve, the statues of emperors dotted around the hall, with Peter and Paul Strudel’s life-size portrait of Emperor Charles VI at the centre.  This section closes with two lively, but, largely invented, studies of Italian Baroque interiors (cat. nos. 56-57).