HM Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022) Reigned 1952-2022

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

Dorothy Frances Edith Wilding was born in Gloucestershire. From a young age, she had ambitions to be an actress or artist. However, she bought her first camera at 16 and soon afterwards, moved to London to begin an apprenticeship with the photographic retoucher Ernest Chandler, who worked with the photographer H. Walter Burnett. Aged 21, Wilding opened her first studio in George Square, Westminster. She later moved the business to a top-floor studio in Regent Street, where she employed seven staff. By the 1930s, her team of staff had grown to some 40; most were women. Wilding’s photographs were distinct for blending striking modern imagery, using bright lighting, heavy retouching and prominent props, with a classical, art deco style. She also mounted the works in an unusual way, using layers of tinted card and tissue paper, embellished with her own signature and with the art nouveau company logo stamped on the reverse. In 1920, Wilding married leather merchant Walter Oscar Portham. The marriage ended in divorce eleven years later and, in 1932, aged 39, she was married for a second time to interior decorator Thomas (Rufus) Leighton Pearce. Pearce created a modernist interior for Wilding’s Bond Street studio. From 1923, Wilding began to show her work in the UK. She was employed to take commercial images for the Condor Hat Company and photographed several leading actresses, including Tallulah Bankhead and Gladys Cooper. Her first Royal portraits were of Prince George (later the Duke of Kent) in 1928. These were followed by portraits of the Duke and Princess Marina in 1934, and Coronation portraits for George VI (1937) and Elizabeth II (1952). Wilding opened a further studio in New York in 1937. Her Bond Street studio was bombed during the Blitz and most of the negatives destroyed, but she continued working from New York. She exhibited her work for the last time in 1957 at the London Salon of Photography. In the following year she published her autobiography, In Pursuit of Perfection, and sold her business to an assistant, Tom Hustler. Wilding died of heart failure in Kensington, some 18 years later, aged 83.

People

Elizabeth II (1926 - 2022)

Places

Subjects

royal portrait, woman, ceremonial costume, bracelet, necklace, fan, earring, riband, crown, Order of the Garter, Queen, armchair

Materials & Techniques

black & white photograph

Artist

Dorothy Wilding (1893 - 1976)

Title

HM Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022) Reigned 1952-2022

Date

1952

Medium

Black and white photograph

Dimensions

height: 44.30 cm, width: 35.20 cm

Acquisition

Official state portrait copy supplied via Ministry of Works

Inscription

below image: [left] DOROTHY WILDING ; below image [on backing paper] Elizabeth R / 1952

GAC number

17771