ABSTRACT

The author was active in London from 1914 to the late 1950s. She became one of Britain’s most successful and influential studio portraitists, having trained as a retoucher with Ernest Chandler at Walter Barnet’s Rnightsbridge studio. After a brief apprenticeship with the American photographer Marian Nielson, she returned to work as a retoucher with Richard Speight in New Bond Street, in London’s West End. These two extracts from her 1955 autobiography In Pursuit of Perfection emphasise both the excitement of a young photographer opening her first studio and the pragmatism of a woman determined to learn the complex mechanics of her profession. Studio portraitists of Wilding’s era were well aware of the vanities of their clients, and of the importance of the skilful reworking of the human face which was so much a part of the retoucher’s art. The one technical aspect of portraiture the author could not teach herself was retouching.