Yevonde: Life and Colourtells the story of a woman who gained freedom through photography – as she experimented with her medium and blazed a new trail for portrait photographers. The exhibition features portraits and still-life works produced by Yevonde over a colourful sixty-year career, and draws on the archive of her work acquired by the Gallery in 2021, as well as extensive new research by our teams.

Dorothy Gisborne as Psyche, by Yevonde (1935). A recent discovery which is testament to the National Portrait Gallery’s ongoing research. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery Extraordinary lives are rediscovered – the Georgian boxer Jem Belcher, the Victorian miniaturist Sarah Biffin, born without arms or legs. The hang is so democratic, it unites servant with mistress and raw recruit with general on the same level. The wall texts are all enthralling knowledge. The exhibition’s strength is in its understanding that art is always a collaborative affair. Yevonde is the star of the show but there are other important contributors.

Scholes, Lucy (19 August 2023). "A Riot of Color". The New York Review of Books . Retrieved 25 August 2023. A suffragette at the height of the cause and lifelong supporter of women’s rights Yevonde took up photography in 1914 as a route to independence. In 1921 she declared ‘portrait photography without women would be a sorry business’. As a member of the Women’s Provisional Club for professional women she spoke out ‘in no phase of modern life has women’s influence proved so stimulating as in photography.’ Wit and raw energy emanate from her most famous series, The Goddesses – inspired by a charity ball in 1935 attended by society women dressed as mythical figures from western antiquity. Seeing an opportunity to try something different, she developed a more dynamic approach and style, establishing a moderately successful business despite the disruption of the first world war and a stint as a land worker.

However, a personal disinclination for suffragette lawbreaking (and the prison sentence that would likely follow) led her to champion women’s emancipation via a different route. Yevonde shot onto three negatives through filters to create a separation image ready for printing. Her Vivex colour Carbro-type prints were made at the first colour print service for professional photographers in the UK.

Other repositories include the Royal Photographic Society Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Council Visual Arts Collection. 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.”

Always looking to vary her approach, her innovations include double portrait montages (typically of couples), while later experimentation with solarisation (a darkroom technique used to reverse tones) echo the much earlier work of Man Ray and Lee Miller. An extraordinary image of the young Judi Dench is a good example. Yevonde’s musesDespite the successes in her time, Madame Yevonde’s pioneering work has been overshadowed in history by her male compatriots—as is often the case for many women artists. The auction and museum worlds have historically played a part in diminishing the contributions of women artists: a 2019 study showed that between 2008 and 2018, women artists accounted for only 11 percent of major museum acquisitions in the United States, and even fewer have received exhibitions dedicated solely to their work.