Lot Essay
Collins and Trevelyan would have first met in 1933-34 shortly after Trevelyan's return from Paris. They were both included in the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition held at the New Burlington Galleries. The exhibition was first proposed by the poet and writer David Gascoyne (see lots 18 and 146). Collins, however, along with Sutherland and several others severed any links with the Surrealists the day after the exhibition closed. Trevelyan wrote 'Collins, whom I knew well, had far too much of a personal religious mysticism to make a good surrealist. He has always been a cat that walks by himself, prophetic, poetic, visionary' (see William Anderson, The Quest for Happiness, London, 1988, p.47).