“Pauline, Lady Trevelyan” by William Bell Scott, 1811-90

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Pauline Jermyn, Lady Trevelyan

William Bell Scott

1864

Oil on canvas,

21 ⅝ x 17 ⅜ inches (55 x 44.4 cm).

Wallington, Northumbria

Collection of National Trust, Wallington Hall, accession no. NT584353, by kind permission

Pauline Trevelyan was both a friend and a patron of the Pre-Raphaelites. She was born Pauline Jermyn on 25 January 1816 at Hawkedon Parsonage in Hawkedon in Suffolk, the eldest child of the Revd. Dr. George Bitton Jermyn and his wife Catherine Rowland. Within a year or two of her birth her father became the vicar of Swaffham Prior, near Cambridge, and this is where she grew up. She was educated at home by governesses and tutors and at an early age learnt Greek, Latin, French, German and Italian. [Continued below]

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Her father was a member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. It was at the association’s meeting held in Cambridge in 1833 that the seventeen-year-old Pauline first met thirty-six year-old Walter Calverley Trevelyan. He was immediately impressed by her and her intellect. Ladies came to the meetings only as guests and were never full members. Early in 1835 Walter Trevelyan proposed marriage and she accepted him on 12 February. They were married on 12 May 1835 at Swaffham Church and their honeymoon was spent in Kent and Sussex. Both Trevelyans were fond of travel and on 13 August 1835 they travelled to the continent and stayed abroad for the next three years. From 1835 to 1846 the couple travelled frequently to Europe, especially to Rome and other major Italian cities. On 10 June 1843 she first met John Ruskin, who was to become a life-long friend, at a breakfast party at the home of Dr. William Buckland in Christ Church, Oxford. On May 23, 1846 Sir John Trevelyan died and Walter became successor to the baronetcy. The couple initially lived at Nettlecombe Court, their estate in the Brendon Hills in Somerset, for three years. After the death of Walter’s mother in 1851 the couple came into possession of Wallington Hall in Northumberland, and Pauline arranged for the architect John Dobson to renovate the house’s central yard into a hall. She had first met William Bell Scott in July 1855 and in 1856 commissioned him to decorate the central hall at Wallington with eight large murals of episodes relating to the famous people and the history of Northumberland. By 1864-65 Pauline was disabled for most of the time. She died from ovarian cancer on May 13, 1866 at Neuchâtel in Switzerland where she was on holiday with her husband and Ruskin. She was buried at Neuchâtel.

Scott painted Lady Trevelyan in August 1864 at Nettlecombe Court. It is his most successful portrait as well as being the most Pre-Raphaelite. Instead of a frontal half-length portrait it shows her in profile to the left, wearing a black and white striped dress, and holding a bunch of red and white camellias in her hand. The background features a green and gold curtain decorated with flowers and is reminiscent of similar backgrounds in paintings of the same period by artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Frederick Sandys and G. F. Watts. Both Pauline and her husband were keen botanists. In the language of flowers camellias symbolized affection, admiration, and perfected loveliness. In the background of Sir Walter Trevelyan’s portrait at Wallington Scott has included white arum lilies prominently in a pot in the background. — Dennis T. Lanigan

Link to Related Material

Review of John Batchelor's Lady Trevelyan and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (London: Chatto & Windus, 2006), by Jacqueline Banerjee

Last modified 8 March 2024