De Glehn's father was Alexander de Glenn of
Sydenham, London, himself the son of Robert von Glehn, a
Baltic baron with estates near
Tallinn in Estonia, who had become a naturalised British subject following his marriage to a Scottish woman. Wilfrid's mother was French.
Louise Creighton, a women's rights activist and author, and
Alfred de Glehn, a French
steam locomotive designer, were Alexander's sister and brother. at the Villa Torlonia,
Frascati (1907) Wilfried von Glehn (he changed his name in May 1917) was born in
Sydenham, south-east London. After schooling at
Brighton College with his brother Louis, he studied art briefly at the
Royal Academy Schools in South Kensington before going on to the
École des Beaux-Arts in
Paris, where for a time he lived with his French cousin, the artist Lucien Monod (1867–1957). In 1891, he was hired by
Edwin Austin Abbey and
John Singer Sargent to assist them on their
Boston Public Library mural project at Morgan Hall. De Glehn exhibited his own work first in
Rome in 1894 and then in Paris in 1895; he was also elected an Associetaire of the
Société des Artistes Français. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1896. De Glehn met American-born artist
Jane Erin Emmet in
New Rochelle, New York in 1903, and they were married there the following year. Following their wedding, the couple honeymooned in Cornwall, England, vacationed in Paris and Venice, and made a permanent home in
Chelsea, London. The following year, de Glehn was commissioned and served with the
Royal Garrison Artillery. He was seconded to the
front in Italy in 1917. In May 1917, his family shed the Germanic 'von Glehn' surname. Because of his fluent French, he spent the last part of the war as an interpreter. After the war, de Glehn held solo exhibitions at the
Leicester Galleries and in New York (1920). For the next decade the couple would spend summers in Cornwall and winters in France. Although some experts rank de Glehn alongside Sargent, he is considered as something of a late British
Renoir, for his deft use of sunlight and shadow. He died on 11 May 1951, at the age of 80, at his home, the Manor House in
Stratford Tony,
Wiltshire, to which he had moved in 1942 after the Chelsea house had been destroyed in the
Blitz. An oil painting of Venice featured on the BBC's
Antiques Roadshow in December 2014 and was valued at £20–30,000. ==Gallery==