Julian Trevelyan 1910-1988
Low Tide, Durham Wharf, 1950
oil on canvas
20½ by 28¼ inches
signed and dated

Provenance
Private Collection, UK

Exhibited
Dublin, National College of Art Galleries, Irish Exhibition of Living Art - 1943-1976, 1951



‘The broad bend of the river at Chiswick has become so much part of my life that I can conceive of living nowhere else. Besides the river traffic, tugs, barges, sailing dinghies, skiffs and eights, there are the ever-changing states of the tide. It reminds me at times of a Venetian fete; for here the river is at its broadest and most majestic, and beyond the opposite bank there are reservoirs, so that the nearest houses seem very far away. From our garden we look up river to Chiswick Eyot, an island of willows, decorated at either end with a group of swans who are forever cleaning themselves, their long necks turning and twisting ceaselessly’

Julian Trevelyan - Indigo Days, 1957


Julian Trevelyan (1910-1988) first began painting the Thames at Durham Wharf in the mid 1940s. In 1951 Trevelyan married the artist Mary Fedden (b.1915) who continues to live and paint there until this day.

He worked on his paintings with great speed often completing his paintings in a day or two. This energy is reflected in his paintings which capture in their handling, the rhythm and energy of the busy riverside. Trevelyan had a long standing enjoyment of sailing on the river in his dinghy, where he would often sail long distances up and down stream.

In Low Tide Trevleyan has painted himself into the foreground gathering fishing nets, in the centre is the island Chiswick Eyot and in the background are glimpses of industrial buildings which Trevelyan first painted in the late 1930s in Bolton. The painting is presented in its original frame, which would have been chosen by the artist and stripped back in an old bath, which he used to keep in his garden.