Robert Meyrick chronicles the life of John Elwyn, staring with his childhood and family background in Adpar, Cardiganshire, Wales, where his father had established a small woollen mill. Going into detail he illustrates the relative isolation of Elwyn’s childhood, and his interest in drawing despite the lack of any real early art education. Merrick proceeds to follow Elwyn’s eventual move to follow a formal art education, interrupted by the Second World War when he became a Conscientious Objector, and into his working career and eventual establishment as an artist. Frequent reference is made to friends and others involved is his for some considerable time otherwise solitary life.

The text is very accessible and well documented with notes. The Appendixes provide a list of Exhibitions; Public Collections; Holidays; Books, Catalogues and Principle Reviews; Television and Radio Programmes; Illustrations; and Further Reading.

The book is illustrated throughout in both colour and black and white; in total there are 45 colour plates, either full page or half-page; and 65 black and white illustrations, usually smaller. Covering his life-time work they amply demonstrate the range of Elwyn’s output and the change in the artist’s paintings over the years, including his response to the Coldstream Report. They show above all the artist’s love of the countryside and his native Wales as well as the people. The quality of production is good, the colour reproductions especially showing the increasing vibrancy of the artist’s palette as the years progress. If I have a complaint it is that I would have liked to have seen more colour plates, that black and white reproductions inevitably pale by comparison; frustrating when a picture is entitled “Pink and Grey Shapes” to have appear only in black and white. ( )