Dorothy (‘Dolly’) Evelyn Whitall married Madame Yevonde’s second cousin, Sir Malcolm Campbell, racing driver and holder of the world land and water speed records in 1930. (see also Racing Car by Cyril Power). Yevonde encountered considerably difficulties in creating the tear drops. Glycerine did not work so, as she recorded in her biography In Camera, ‘We tried a little Vaseline with the glycerine. This was better but looked lumpy and not sufficiently transparent. So we tried more glycerine and unfortunately this time it got into her eyes and caused such exquisite pain that Dolly wept real tears … when at last she looked up her eyes were bloodshot and her expression so miserable I rushed the focus and was able to take a face expressive of the utmost sorrow and pain. This picture was in some was ways the best in the exhibition’.

References to classical and contemporary Surrealism pervade The Goddessesseries of society beauties transformed into Green and Roman Goddesses, which Yevonde began in 1935. Whilst claiming in her autobiography, In Camera, that her inspiration for the series derived solely from the 18th century painters’ idea of depicting beauties as Greek Goddess, it would appear that the its immediate impetus came from the ‘Olympian Ball’ held at Claridges hotel in London in March 1935.

Madame Yevonde Be Original or Die, The British Council 1998