Pioneering colour photographer, Madame Yevonde images on show at National Portrait Gallery

The first major exhibition as part of the National Portrait Gallery’s reopening on 22 June will showcase the groundbreaking work of 20th century British photographer, Yevonde.

Supported by the CHANEL Culture Fund, the exhibition will include new prints and discoveries, revealed by the latest research on Yevonde’s colour negative archive, acquired by the Gallery in 2021.

Mrs Yevonde Middleton, known better to the world of photography as Madame Yevonde or simply Yevonde, was a global pioneer in colour photography and has been one of the BIPP’s most notable members since the association started in 1901. Joining the BIPP back under its previous name, the Professional Photographs Association, in 1919 at the age of 26, she remained a loyal member until her death in 1975 at age 82.

For the first time ever, over 25 newly discovered photographs by Yevonde are on show at the National Portrait Gallery in the largest-ever exhibition of the artist’s work. With over 150 works displayed, Yevonde: Life and Colour running until 15 October 2023, is supported by the CHANEL Culture Fund, which will survey the portraits, commercial commissioned work and still lives that the artist produced throughout her sixty year career.

Showcasing photographs of some of the most famous faces of the time - from George Bernard Shaw to Vivien Leigh, and John Gielgud to Princess Alexandra - the exhibition positions Yevonde as a trailblazer in the history of British portrait photography.

Reflecting the growing independence of women after the First World War, this exhibition will focus on the freedom photography afforded Yevonde, who became an innovator in new techniques, experimenting with solarisation and the Vivex colour process. The exhibition is the first to open as part of the National Portrait Gallery’s 2023 programme, following the largest redevelopment in its history.

“If we are going to have colour photographs, for heaven’s sake let’s have a riot of colour, none of your wishy washy hand tinted effects”

Yevonde, 1932 - address to the Royal Photographic Society

A London-based photographer whose work focused on portraits and still life throughout much of the twentieth century. Yevonde was introduced to photography as a career through her involvement with the suffragette cause. As an innovator committed to colour photography when it was not considered a serious medium, Yevonde’s oeuvre is significant in the history of British photography.

Director of the National Portrait Gallery, Dr Nicholas Cullinan, comments, “I am delighted to launch the new National Portrait Gallery with Yevonde’s extraordinary photography and to be able to share exciting new research and acquisitions we have made of her pioneering and inimitable work. Thanks to the CHANEL Culture Fund, whose support of the exhibition and digitisation of the artist’s important archive, which has enabled us to bring Yevonde’s inventive and humorous creations into focus for a new generation.”

In 2021, Yevonde’s tri-colour separation negative archive was acquired by the Gallery through funding from The Portrait Fund. Following extensive research, cataloguing and digitisation, funded by CHANEL Culture Fund, stunning new discoveries have been uncovered. Revealed for the first time in this new exhibition, they showcase the range of sitters and subjects that Yevonde photographed in colour- from glamorous debutantes and the royal family to leading writers, artists and film stars. The vibrant colour portrait of one of the most photographed women in the 1930s, socialite Margaret Sweeny (1938), will be shown for the first time. Later, in

Madame Yevonde Life And Colour

1963, as Duchess of Argyll, Margaret gained notoriety through a high-profile divorce. The scandal was recently dramatised in the 2021 award-winning BBC series A Very British Scandal, with Margaret portrayed by Claire Foy. The exhibition will also feature a new colour print of the portrait of Surrealist patron and poet, Edward James, 1933, used on the cover of his 1938 volume of poetry, The Bones of My Hand. Yevonde’s still life often integrated elements of Surrealist iconography, and she referenced the work of Man Ray in her own portraits.

The exhibition will explore Yevonde’s life and career through self-portraiture and autobiography, contextualising her work within the productive days of creative modernist photography. To this end, a previously unseen self-portrait in vivid Vivex tricolour from 1937 has been uncovered and will be displayed as part of the exhibition. The self-portrait sees Yevonde looking directly into the lens and at the viewer, positioned alongside her weighty one-shot camera and using Art Now - Herbert

Read’s survey of modern art from 1933 - as a prop, clearly depicting herself as an artist with a camera. Photographs Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, Clare Freestone, says, “Yevonde’s originality demonstrated through these photographs traverses almost a century and provides a vision so fresh and relatable. It is enthralling that there are further revelations to be transformed into colour after almost a century or, for some, for the very first time.”

Establishing her studio before the outbreak of the First World War, Yevonde’s work quickly became published in leading society and fashion magazines such as the Tatler and the Sketch, depicting new freedoms in fashion and leisure as well as capturing the growing independence of women. Her commercial work also appeared as advertisements constructed through humorous still life or by using models in tableaux. Yevonde’s audience included the readers of the growing field of women’s magazines, including Woman and Beauty and Eve’s Journal.

National Portrait Gallery

Yevonde, 1921

Yevonde’s most renowned body of work is a series of women dressed as Goddesses posed in surreal tableaux made in 1935, first exhibited as part of Goddess & Others at her Berkeley Square studio in London. She took inspiration from an Olympian charity ball and constructed dreamlike representations of modern, humorous and surreal Greek and Roman Goddesses in vivid colour at her studio. Bringing together the series, the exhibition will consider aesthetic and mythic references and uncover the biographies of her sitters.

An exciting new discovery revealed during the final stages of producing the exhibition publication, is the portrait of Dorothy Gisborne (Pratt) as Psyche (1935). Yevonde’s portrayal of the Greek goddess of the soul, with customary butterfly wings, is a previously unknown element of the Goddess series.

“Mrs Gisborne posed as Psyche. Her mournful brown eyes, exquisite mouth and fair hair seemed to me to express the pleasure as well as the pain that Psyche was forced to endure.”

Yevonde, 1940

The exhibition builds on Reframing Narratives: Women in Portraiture, a major three-year project which has seen the representation of women across the Gallery’s Collection enhanced, with a particular focus on 20th and 21st century portraiture. In addition to this exhibition, when the Gallery reopens 48% of portraits on the walls of post-1900 galleries will be of women. Over 200 portraits of women made after 1900 and over 100 portraits by women made after 1900 will be displayed in the Gallery.

Global Head of Arts and Culture at CHANEL, Yana Peel, says, “The CHANEL Culture Fund is committed to elevating the voices of women and broadening representation in cultural storytelling. At this historic reopening of the National Portrait Gallery, we are delighted to extend our tradition of patronage to celebrate Yevonde, a bold innovator who defined what it means to see and be seen, and whose pioneering photography will now inspire future generations.”

The National Portrait Gallery is offering a new £5 ticket for its Summer 2023 season of exhibitions, available to all visitors aged 30 and under. Supported by the Principal Partner of the new National Portrait Gallery - Bank of America - reduced £5 tickets for Yevonde: Life and Colour will be available to all visitors aged 30 and under, seven days a week. The exhibition will also be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, featuring over 160 beautifully illustrated photographic works from the pioneering photographer. The book, which includes an introductory essay by exhibition curator Clare Freestone, will explore how Yevonde’s bold creations brought a burst of colour to photography in Britain. It is available to pre-order now.