Mary Fedden

Mary Fedden (1915-2012) left school at sixteen to attend the Slade School of Art. She studied under the theatre designer Vladimir Polunin, who’d worked with the Ballets Russes. She said of Polunin: "He gave me a direction for colour and design...looking back I am sure he was a wonderful inspiration to me."

Fedden graduated in 1936, but her artistic career was put on hold by the outbreak of the Second World War. She volunteered as a Land Girl, hoping to be sent to the countryside away from the bombings, but instead found herself on a farm in Gloucestershire, next door to the Bristol Aeroplane Company in Filton, which was a major target of the Luftwaffe. 

Later in the war she moved to London and worked as a set painter for the Arts Theatre and as a mural artist producing propaganda for the Ministry of War. In 1944, Fedden was called up and sent abroad, working as a driver for the assistant head of the NAAFI in Europe. She returned to London two years later and resumed her artistic career, with her first solo exhibition at the Mansard Gallery at Heal’s in 1947.

Fedden married artist Julian Trevelyan, whom she had met at the Slade, in 1951.  They collaborated on several projects, including a mural commission for Charing Cross Hospital. During her early career, Fedden also completed mural commissions for the Festival of Britain and for the P&O liner SS Canberra.

In 1956 Fedden became the first female tutor at the Royal College of Art, teaching painting to the likes of David Hockney and Allen Jones. From 1984-1988 she was president of the Royal West of England Academy. She was elected to the Royal Academy in 1992 and awarded an OBE in 1997 for her contribution to art.

Fedden's work evolved over time, influenced by Trevelyan as well as Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, and Ben Nicholson. Her compositions are often a hybrid of still life and landscape, characterised by a flattened picture plane. She had a particular fondness for cats, which frequently appear in her paintings.

Though for much of Fedden's life her career was overshadowed by that of her husband, by her seventies she had begun to receive more attention for her work, being described in The Telegraph's obituary as "one of Britain’s best-known and most sought-after painters".

Today, Fedden’s work continues to captivate collectors, and we are pleased to offer five of her paintings in our upcoming British & European Fine Art auction.

The British & European Fine Art auction takes place on Thursday 21st May at our Cardiff saleroom.