Cecil Beaton astonishing photos of famous people
Extraordinary Cecil Beaton’s impact on 20th-century British and American fashion
Audrey Hepburn in costume for My Fair Lady, 1963. Original colour transparency. The Cecil Beaton Archive, London
Cecil Beaton
Cecil Beaton was a renowned photographer and an extraordinary force in the twentieth-century British and American creative scenes.
Cecil Beaton, c.1935, Gelatin silver print, The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive, London
He was also a fashion illustrator, an Oscar-winning costume designer, a social caricaturist, and a perceptive writer.
Almost entirely self-taught, Beaton established a singular photographic style.
Worldly Colour (Charles James evening dresses), 1948. Original colour transparency. The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive, London
His style were a marriage of Edwardian stage portraiture, emerging European surrealism and the modernist approach of the great American photographers of the era, all filtered through a determinedly English sensibility.
The National Portrait Gallery is staging its first major exhibition dedicated to the ground-breaking fashion photography of Cecil Beaton.
Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World spotlights his trailblazing fashion photography, the core of his illustrious career, which laid the foundation for his later successes.
The Second Age of Beauty is Glamour (suit by Hartnell), 1946, Original colour transparency, The Condé Nast Archive, London
Through several interwoven themes, the exhibition follows Beaton’s career from its inception, as a child of the Edwardian era experimenting with his first camera on his earliest subjects – his two sisters and mother – his years of invention and creativity as a student at Cambridge University, to his first images of high society patrons who put him on the map.
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With around 250 items on display, including photographs, letters, sketches, and costumes, the exhibition showcases Beaton at his most triumphant.
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Beaton elevated fashion and portrait photography to an art form; his era-defining photographs captured the beauty, glamour and star power in the interwar and early post-war eras.
Era of the Bright Young Things
The exhibition journeys through the London of the 1920s and 1930s, the era of the ‘Bright Young Things’ and Beaton’s first commissions for his greatest patron, Vogue, as well as his travels to New York and Paris during the Jazz Age.
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Drawn to its glamour and star wattage, Beaton photographed the legends of Hollywood in its Golden Age.
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From Hollywood stars and titans of art to high society and royalty, the exhibition features portraits of some of the twentieth century’s most iconic figures, including Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando; Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret; as well as Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Salvador Dalí.
At the Tuxedo Ball (Nancy Harris), 1946, Original colour transparency, The Condé Nast Archive, New York
Cecil Beaton’s first royal photographs appeared in the late 1930s.
As the Second World War loomed, he defined the notion of the monarchy for a modern age.
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Appointed an official war photographer by the Ministry of Information, his wartime service took him around the globe.
Brilliant high fashion glamour
The war’s end ushered in a new era of elegance, and Beaton captured the high fashion brilliance of the 1950s in vivid, glorious colour.
Elizabeth Taylor, 1955, Gelatin silver print, The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive, London
The exhibition ends with what many consider his greatest triumph and by which he is likely best known: the costumes and sets for the musical My Fair Lady, on stage and later screen.
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Robin Muir, curator of the exhibit, summarises the show as follows, “Cecil Beaton needs little introduction as a photographer, fashion illustrator, triple Oscar-winning costume designer, social caricaturist, elegant writer of essays and occasionally waspish diaries, stylist, decorator, dandy and party goer.
Best Invitation of the Season (Nina De Voe in ball gown by Balmain), 1951, Original colour transparency, The Condé Nast Archive, New York
Beaton’s impact spans the worlds of fashion, photography and design. Unquestionably one of the leading visionary forces of the British twentieth century, he also made a lasting contribution to the artistic lives of New York, Paris and Hollywood.”
Text & photos courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, and as credited
