Sir Wifred Ayre (1890–1971) was a naval architect who with his brother Sir Amos Ayre founded the Burntisland Shipbuilding Company in 1918. It became the most efficient and productive merchant shipbuilding yard in the UK, achieving this by attention to detail in the design of the ships and the production planning in the yard. The four-sided multiple punch machine specially designed by Wilfred Ayre accounted for the major part of the efficiency achieved by this yard in the construction technology of its ships. The portrait was painted in 1956 by the Scottish portrait painter Sir William Oliphant Hutchison (1889–1970) who was President of the Scottish Royal Academy.