Pauline, Lady Trevelyan
British artist (1816-1866)
Pauline, Lady Trevelyan (née Paulina Jermyn; 25 January 1816, Hawkedon, Suffolk – 13 May 1866, Neuchâtel, Switzerland) was an English painter, noted for single-handedly making Wallington Hall in Northumberland a centre of High Victorian cultural life, and for enchanting with her intellect and art John Ruskin, Swinburne, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, Thomas Carlyle, John Everett Millais, and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. She was married in May 1835 to Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan, 6th Baronet.
Background
Paulina (known as Pauline) Jermyn was the eldest child of George Bitton Jermyn (1789–1857), of Hawkedon Parsonage, who, to ensure the Jermyn surname survived, added it as her second Christian name. Her mother was of Huguenot descendancy.
The marriage between artist Pauline Jermyn, the penniless daughter of a clergyman and the rich, teetotal, vegetarian Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan was an unlikely, but not surprisingly successful arrangement—their common interest in geology and art ensured their compatibility and the childless marriage allowed them to channel their creativity to other ends. William Bell Scott said of her,
"a true woman, but without vanity, and very likely without the passion of love."
Artistic and other interests
Shortly before proposing to Pauline, Walter had made his future wife a gift of a box of fossils. Walter had been described as "an intellectual of a dry professional order". He was the owner of Wallington estate from 1846 until his death. Besides being a distinguished geologist, he had a great interest in botany and was an authority on farming methods, winning awards for his cattle. His strict views on alcohol led to the dumping of his father’s wine collection into a nearby lake.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Pauline, Lady Trevelyan” is british artist (1816-1866). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Pauline, Lady and Trevelyan, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7154968. VIAF identifies the subject as 28230153. The Library of Congress control number is no2007004199. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1816, 1866, 1835 and 1789.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pauline, Lady Trevelyan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.