Being quite partial to a painted portrait, the story behind the 1950’s Aero girls sparked my interest: Two archivists from the Borthwick Institute for Archives,  found a Rowntree’s file containing a batch of 20 original oil paintings, tucked in between boxes of sales figures and meeting minutes. Each canvas was labelled either with a first name – ‘Audrey’, ‘Elaine’ etc – or  simply, ‘the art student’. All women whose faces were painted to advertise Aero chocolate bars back in the day. Aren’t they incredible? There are 40 paintings in total – some by known artists – with 20 currently missing. A figure which, coupled with the fact that oil paintings were not typical of commercial art of that era, sparked a search to find the sitters. This started with an exhibition (just closed) in York.

Last week, Channel 4 News managed to track down one of the models – Pamela Synge, now 93, living in Belgravia (side note: she’s done well for herself) – and subsequently, her portrait, hanging on the wall above her mantelpiece. Amazing. But what of the other 19? Read more about it and find the full set of images here. And if you know anything then get in touch with the Borthwick Institute.