Julian Trevelyan valuation
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.
What a work by Julian Trevelyan is worth
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Bio
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.
Durham Wharf, the Royal College and the Thames Suite
Trevelyan bought Durham Wharf, on the Thames at Hammersmith, in 1935, and it remained his home and studio for the rest of his life. As head of etching at the Royal College of Art from 1955 to 1963 he taught David Hockney, R. B. Kitaj and Norman Ackroyd. In 1969 he made the Thames Suite, twelve etchings following the river from Oxford and Henley down to the estuary, and he was elected a Royal Academician in 1987.
The prints are recorded in the catalogue raisonné edited by Silvie Turner, and the Bohun Gallery in Henley handles the estate. Tate holds more than a hundred of his works. A print is identified by its title and catalogue number, and the edition size written in pencil should agree with the catalogue.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
