Two girls in a garden, 1908.

An autochrome of her daughters taken by Etheldreda Janet Laing. The younger girl stands beside her sister holding a pink parasol. The older girl rests her bonnet on her lap. In the summer of 1908 Laing took a series of autochrome portraits of her children in the garden of the family home, Bury Knowle. As a young woman Laing studied art in Cambridge and became an enthusiastic amateur photographer. When autochrome plates first came on the market in 1907, she decided to try her hand at colour photography. The autochrome process was the first really practicable and commercially successful process for colour photography. Patented in 1904, it was invented by French film pioneer brothers Louis and Auguste Lumiere. Autochromes are transparent images on glass, similar to lantern slides.