Julian Trevelyan
English Surrealist, Mass Observation collagist, and a superb etcher of rivers and cities.
Julian Trevelyan was born in Dorset in 1910 into a well-known intellectual family, went to Cambridge to read English and left for Paris, where he studied etching at Atelier 17 under Stanley William Hayter alongside Miro and Ernst. He exhibited in the London International Surrealist Exhibition of 1936, made collages for Mass Observation in industrial Bolton, and served in a camouflage unit during the war. He taught etching at the Royal College for a decade, lived at Durham Wharf on the Thames with Mary Fedden, and worked until his death in 1988.
A British market in which the printmaking is the substantial part. Trevelyan's etchings and aquatints of Thames scenes, European cities, Venice and India were published in editions typically of fifty to a hundred and fifty, signed and titled in pencil, and are what most owners hold; impression quality, plate tone and margins separate them. The Surrealist paintings and Bolton collages of the 1930s are far scarcer and lead the market. Works are frequently found alongside those of Mary Fedden, his wife, and the two are collected together.
If you own a work by Julian Trevelyan
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