Portraits for Coca-Cola

More than a century ago, my great-great-uncle, Hamilton King, a prominent American magazine and advertising illustrator who was known for his paintings of pretty girls, was commissioned by Coca-Cola to produce something special for them. His Coca-Cola girls – the first in 1909 and another in 1913 – have since become iconic, those elegant faces, framed by broad Edwardian hats, you see on those highly collectible serving trays. Although Uncle Hamilton died before I was born, my mother had been something of a favourite of his and I so grew up hearing stories about him and what’s more in an old New England farmhouse where some of his paintings graced the walls – including quite a remarkable one he’d painted of his younger sister, Millie, my great-grandmother, as a beautiful young woman reclining on a chaise lounge sometime in the 1890s and in a dress that would have been quite daring for the time. It’s not the way many people imagine their great-grandmothers.

I was familiar with Uncle Hamiton’s work for Coca-Cola so when I was approached by the Coca-Cola Foundation to shoot some portraits of women in Africa in support of a program they’d set up to help women form their own businesses, I was delighted at this opportunity to follow on from my great-great-uncle Hamilton’s turn-of-the-century Coca-Cola girls.