Lot Essay
Tunnard and Trevelyan would have first met in London in about 1934 shortly after Trevelyan's return from Paris. Trevelyan wrote a text on Tunnard which was first published in the London Bulletin No.12 in March 1939 'Who is John Tunnard? Why he's the man in the loud check coat. You must have seen him, the man who always wears a shocking pink tie, and with a face that's a mixture between a fox's and a giant panda's. The man who laughs like a jackal so that you can hear him two blocks away. Don't tell me you haven't heard him. The man who is always talking about shipwrecks and pirates. They say he lives in Cornwall where he undermines the morals of the older fishermen; he turns them into jitterbugs ... Don't believe them when they tell you he paints. It's simply not true, and I am in a unique position to tell you why. It's all done for him by an army of insects. Five hundred spiders, twenty shipworms, seventy-five beetles, quite a few exotic caterpillars, a hard-working slug, and a Bol-Weevil. I've seen them at work.'