Madame Yevonde

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Madame Yevonde , actually Yevonde Cumbers (born January 5, 1893 in London , † December 22, 1975 in London) was a British photographer who pioneered the use of color film in the field of portrait photography . Her stage name was Madame Yevonde.

Life

After training at the progressive, liberal Lingholt Boarding School in Hindhead as well as in Paris, Belgium and France, Yevonde Cumbers joined the British suffragette movement in 1910, modeled on Mary Wollstonecraft . They also began in London standing part Mayfair three years of training in the known portrait photographer Madame Lallie Charles (1869-1919).

At the age of 21 in 1914, Yevonde founded her own studio in the City of Westminster , where she invited well-known personalities to be portrayed for free. By 1921, Madame Yevonde had developed into a well-known and respected portraitist and moved into larger premises on Victoria Street. The recognition of her work also brought her numerous orders for advertising recordings and the like. a. Christie’s and Daimler-Benz and for magazines like Tatler or Fortune . In the same year she became a member of the Professional Photographer's Association, London.

Around 1932 she began to experiment with the Vivex process for color development and became one of the first photographers to be able to produce portraits in color without coloring .

In the same year Madame Yevonde showed about 70 of her color photographs in the Albany Gallery in London, for which she received rave reviews; it was the first ever exhibition of color photographs in Great Britain.

Her recordings from a festival in 1935, to which guests came dressed up as Greek gods and goddesses, became particularly well known.

In 1936 she was commissioned by a magazine to record the final preparations for the launch of the RMS Queen Mary . The pictures were a great success and were printed in a detailed photo series in People Magazine. In the same year she was also commissioned to organize the festivities around the coronation of George VI. to photograph.

She photographed u. a. Personalities like Adele Astaire , Cecil Beaton , Donald Campbell , Barbara Cartland , Harriet Cohen , Noël Coward , John Gielgud , Constant Lambert , Gertrude Lawrence , Vivien Leigh , William Somerset Maugham , Yehudi Menuhin , AA Milne , Diana Mitford , Alice, Duchess of Gloucester , Louis and Patricia Mountbatten , Iris Murdoch , Paul Robeson , Haile Selassie , George Bernard Shaw , Alison Uttley , Evelyn Waugh , Rebecca West .

Madame Yevonde was married to the journalist and screenwriter Edgar C. Middleton (1894-1939) since 1920.

estate

Madame Yevonde's estate is in the National Portrait Gallery, London .

literature

  • Literature by and about Madame Yevonde in the catalog of the German National Library
  • Gen Doy: Picturing the Self: Changing Views of the Subject in Visual Culture . IB Tauris, 2004
  • The Goddesses: Portraits by Madame Yevonde. Edited by Lawrence Hole, Laughing Elephant, 2001
  • Madame Yevonde: Be Original or Die. Edited by Brett Rogers, exhibition catalog, The British Council, 1998

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Curzon Street, Mayfair, London. Gen Doy: Picturing the Self: Changing Views of the Subject in Visual Culture . IB Tauris, 2004, p. 115.
  2. ↑ a b Goddesses and Others National Portrait Gallery, London (English)
  3. ↑ a b The Work of Madame Yevonde Benham Gallery (engl.)
  4. ↑ Manufactured by "Color Photographs Ltd.", which was closed with the beginning of World War II in 1939.
  5. ↑ History of Photography in 40 Photographs A Short History of Color Photography (pdf. English)
  6. ↑ The Yevonde Portrait Archive of the National Portrait Gallery (English)
  7. ↑ Madame Yevonde Collection estate in the National Portrait Gallery, London (English)
personal data
SURNAME Yevonde, madame
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cumbers, Yevonde (real name); Plummer, Edith
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British photographer and color photography pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH January 5, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH 22nd December 1975
Place of death London