Yevonde Philone Middleton (née Cumbers; 5 January 1893 – 22 December 1975) was an English photographer, who pioneered the use of colour in portrait photography. She used the professional name Madame Yevonde in a career lasting over 60 years. Early life Yevonde Philone Cumbers was born on 5th January 1893 in Streatham. She was the eldest of two daughters, and with Verena, her younger sister, the family moved to Bromley in 1899. She was initially educated by a governess and a local day school, then at the liberal and progressive Lingholt Boarding School in Hindhead and subsequently at the Guilde Internationale in Paris, as well as boarding schools in Belgium and France. From an early age Yevonde Cumbers displayed an independent attitude. Her heroine was women's liberationist Mary Wollstonecraft, and she joined the Suffragette movement in 1910. Upon leaving school, she returned to the family home in Bromley, Kent, and became active in suffragette activities, but realised that she was not cut out to be a leader in the field of women's rights. Cumbers eventually ceased her active involvement, but not before answering an advert she had seen in The Suffragette for a photographer's apprentice. She attended an interview with Lena Connell, who took austere photos of nobility and suffragette leaders. Instead, Cumbers sought, and was given, a three-year apprenticeship with the portrait photographer Lallie Charles. With the technical grounding she received from working with Charles, and a gift of £250 from her father, at the age of 21 Yevonde set up her own studio at 92 Victoria Street, London, and began to make a name for herself by inviting well-known figures to sit for free. Before long her pictures were appearing in society magazines such as the Tatler and The Sketch. Her style quickly moved away from the stiff "pouter pigeon" look of Lallie Charles, toward a still formal, but more creative, style. Her subjects were often pictured looking away from the camera, and she began using props to creative effect. By 1921, Madame Yevonde had become a well-known and respected portrait photographer, and moved to larger premises at 100 Victoria Street. Here she began taking advertising commissions and also photographed many of the leading personalities of the day, including A.A. Milne, Barbara Cartland, Diana Mitford, Louis Mountbatten and Noël Coward. Career In the early 1930s, Yevonde began experimenting with colour photography, using the new Vivex colour process from