inventive imagery and influential role in 20th‑century British art. Born in Dorking, Surrey, he initially studied English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, before moving to Paris in the early 1930s to immerse himself in the avant‑garde, training at Stanley William Hayter’s print workshop Atelier 17 alongside figures such as Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso.
Trevelyan became a founding member of the British Surrealist group in the 1930s, exhibiting in the landmark International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936. He was celebrated for his prints and etchings, which blended Surrealist whimsy with poetic observation, and for later series such as the Thames Suite (1969), a lyrical set of views of the River Thames.
During the Second World War he served as a camouflage officer with the Royal Engineers, and in the post‑war years he taught etching and printmaking at the Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art, where he influenced a generation of British printmakers. Trevelyan was elected a Royal Academician in 1987 and is remembered as a major figure in modern British printmaking and painting.
