Wilfred de Glehn was thoroughly cosmopolitan in his upbringing and outlook. He was born Wilfred Gabriel von Glehn in Sydenham, South London, and was educated at Brighton College. His father, Alexander von Glehn, was involved in the building of narrow-gauge railways in France, as well as being a coffee-merchant. Wilfred left Brighton College in 1889, spent a very brief period at the Royal Academy Schools, South Kensington, and had enrolled at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris by 1891.

Wilfred first met John Singer Sargent when he was still a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The American painter Edwin Austin Abbey hired Wilfred as his assistant on the ambitious mural decorations that he and Sargent had been comm...