Nicolas Trudgian

Nicolas Trudgian – aviation, transport and landscape artist. It is said that we are fashioned by our earliest influences so it’s little surprise that an artist destined to become well known in the field of military and transport art should grow up in a city like Plymouth, England. Famous for being the harbour from which the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for America and, for centuries, home to the vast Royal Naval dockyards at Devonport, this was a vibrant place for a youngster where there was always something to see, be it planes and trains, aircraft carriers and submarines or tanks and helicopters.

His liking for trains was no doubt fostered by the fact that the house in which he was born in1959 was just yards from a railway line still worked by steam locomotives. Of the many aircraft to see he fondly remembers the Shackletons droning overhead looking much like Lancasters and also the Navy jets which scorched across the city. His father, who had served with the RAF in North Africa during the Second World War, worked in the dockyard and at the annual ‘Navy Days’ he was able to show Nick over the huge ships and ride on the lifts in aircraft carriers to the hangar decks teeming with those first generation jet aircraft.