Mary Fedden 1915-2012

Mary Fedden was born in Bristol in 1915.
She studied at the Slade School of Art in London from 1932 to 1936 under the theatre designer Vladimir Polunin, who had worked with the Ballets Russes.
She painted sets for professional performances at Sadlers Wells, but decided against stage design as a career. Returning to Bristol, Fedden taught art and made a living by painting portraits.
During the war she served in the Land Army and the Woman’s Voluntary Service, and on settling in London she worked as a stage painter for the Arts Theatre in Great Newport Street and produced propaganda murals.
In 1944 she was sent abroad as a driver for the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI).
Fedden resumed easel painting in 1946 and held her first exhibition at the Mansard Gallery in Heal’s Department Store in 1947, showing a number of still lifes and flower paintings.
She was subsequently commissioned to paint covers for Woman magazine. In 1949 she moved to Durham Wharf, on the Thames in Chiswick, and in 1951 she married the artist Julian Trevelyan, whom she had met before the war.
Together they travelled to Europe, Africa, India, Russia and America.
As well as her still lifes, Mary Fedden was a noted muralist, having been commissioned for the Festival of Britain in 1951, the P&O Liner Canberra in 1961, and Charing Cross Hospital (with her husband) in 1980.
From 1956 to 1964 she taught painting at the Royal College of Art, where she was the first female tutor in the Painting School.
Mary Fedden was President of the Royal West of England Academy from 1984 to 1988 and was elected a Royal Academician in the Senior Order in 1992. She received an OBE and a Doctor of Literature, Bath University in the 1990s.