As a former miniaturist painter, Neville’s practice still remains faithful to the egg tempera technique used until the mid 15th century which imprint his pieces with a particular luminosity.
His very first customer was Sir Charles Clore. Art critic David Sylvester organized two of his exhibitions at Chelsea Rare Books in early 1975, both of which sold out. This led to commissions with J.P Getty: Kubla Khan by Coleridge, 16 pages on vellum, Pardoner’s Tale by Chaucer, 7 pages on vellum, and others, all now in Getty’s library in Oxfordshire. A long run of commissions followed from Naim Attallah (Sinbad the Sailor, 10 illuminations, Ecclesiastes, 67 pages, pages from Dante, from Genesis and many book frontispieces and covers for Quartet publishers). During this period, 1977 -1996 he made illustrations and illuminations for various publishers including Heineman, Bloodaxeand Phoebe Phillips.
In 1996 the last vellum factory in the UK closed down because of lack of custom. As Sattentau ran out of this basic material he took to painting on heavy hot press paper, making much bigger pictures. Since then he has exhibited in London, Edinburgh, Boston, Miami, France and Italy.
