Third Officer Ann Rosada Haldin

This half-length portrait depicts Ann Rosada Haldin (1922–86) at the age of twenty-one. It is drawn in white chalk and charcoal (or black chalk) on blue paper. Haldin wears the uniform of an officer in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (also known as the Wrens). Her tricorn hat casts a shadow over her eyes. She holds a pair of gloves in her hands. Coloured pastel has been used to highlight her cap badge and the single blue ring on each of her cuffs (denoting the rank of Third Officer). The portrait is inscribed lower left with the sitter’s name, the artist’s signature and the date: ‘Miss A Haldin / Frank O Salisbury / 1943’.

This drawing may have been made as a study for the oil painting of the same sitter that Salisbury exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1945, as illustrated in 'The Tatler' on 3 January 1945. The chalk drawing remained with the artist until it was sold in his studio sale in 1985. Salisbury was a celebrated society portraitist in the first half of the twentieth century, who painted five British prime ministers (including Winston Churchill) and five US presidents.

His professional appointment book (held at the University of Manchester) indicates that Haldin sat for a portrait on 6 October 1943 at Sarum Chase, his home and studio in Hampstead. She came from a wealthy Jewish family. Her great-grandfather, Philip Victor Haldinstein, had emigrated from Prussia, becoming a naturalised British citizen in 1852 and establishing a successful shoemaking firm in Norwich. Ann’s father, the shipping magnate Philip Edward Haldinstein, shortened the family surname to ‘Haldin’ during the First World War to disguise their Germanic origins. Having founded the Court Line in 1905, he took over the Lamport and Holt line in 1934 and served as a president of the Chamber of Shipping in 1940–41, overseeing the administration of the merchant marine at the height of the Battle of Britain. As a teenager in the 1930s, Ann Haldin was often pictured in newspapers attending the launching ceremonies of her father’s ships. Her knowledge of shipping may have encouraged her decision to join the Wrens.

Haldin volunteered for the service in 1942, rising to the rank of Third Officer (3/O) in August 1943. Produced a few months later, Salisbury’s portrait was perhaps intended to commemorate this promotion. She was promoted again the following year, becoming a Second Officer (2/O) in July 1944. At the time of the latter promotion, she was only twenty-two years old. After the war, it was reported that she had been the youngest woman to achieve this rank. She was based throughout the war in WRNS HQ at the Admiralty in Whitehall, overseeing the deployment of all Wrens serving overseas.

At the end of the war, Haldin was awarded the MBE in the New Year Honours List issued on 1 January 1946. Her citation referred to her “zeal and wholehearted devotion to duty”. She left the Wrens in 1945 but continued to be a high achiever in civilian life. In 1949, aged twenty-seven, she became one of the youngest female magistrates in Britain, sitting at Elham Petty Sessions in Kent. This appointment attracted attention in several local and national newspapers, who ran headlines such as “Girl Will Be Laying Down the Law” (The People, 21 August 1949). In interviews, she mentioned her particular interest in working with young offenders, referring specifically to what she had learnt during her time in the Wrens. “The experience which I gained during the war years in handling youth will help me a great deal,” she told the Kentish Express in an article published on 26 August 1949. In 1955, she married Ronald Daubeny, with whom she went on to have two sons. She died on 19 March 1986.