Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton, CBE (14 January 1904 – 18 January 1980) was a British fashion, portrait and war photographer, diarist, painter, and interior designer, as well as an Oscar–winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre.
Table of Contents
- 1 Career
- 1.1 Photography
- 1.2 Stage and film design
- 1.3 Diaries
- 1.4 Love, Cecil
- 1.5 Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things
- 1.6 Cecil Beaton: The Authorised Biography
- 1.7 Beaton Photographs
- 1.8 Cecil Beaton at Home: An Interior Life
- 1.9 Malice in Wonderland: My Adventures in the World of Cecil Beaton
- 1.10 Cecil Beaton: The Art of the Scrapbook (Legends)
- 1.11 Cecil Beaton's Cocktail Book
- 1.12 The Wandering Years: 1922-39 (Cecil Beaton's Diaries Book 1)
- 1.13 The Glass of Fashion: A Personal History of Fifty Years of Changing Tastes and the People Who Have Inspired Them
Career
After a rushed time in the associates timber business, he worked following a glue merchant in Holborn. This resulted in “an orgy of photography at weekends” so he arranged to strike out on his own. Under the patronage of Osbert Sitwell he put upon his first exhibition in the Cooling Gallery, London. It caused quite a stir.
Believing that he would meet similar to greater success upon the extra side of the Atlantic, he left for New York and slowly built stirring a reputation there. By the get older he left, he had “a contract later than Condé Nast Publications to take photographs exclusively for them for several thousand pounds a year for several years to come.”
From 1930 to 1945, Beaton leased Ashcombe House in Wiltshire, where he entertained many notable figures.
In 1947, he bought Reddish House, set in 2.5 acres of gardens, approximately 5 miles (8.0 km) to the east in Broad Chalke. Here he transformed the interior, adding rooms upon the eastern side, extending the parlour southwards, and introducing many additional fittings. Greta Garbo was a visitor. He remained at the house until his death in 1980 and is buried in the churchyard.
Photography
Beaton meant book jackets (see Catherine Ives), and costumes for outfit matinees, learning the craft of photography at the studio of Paul Tanqueray, until Vogue took him on regularly in 1927. He set happening his own studio, and one of his outdated clients and, later, best friends was Stephen Tennant. Beaton’s photographs of Tennant and his circle are considered some of the best representations of the Bright Young People of the twenties and thirties.
Beaton’s first camera was a Kodak 3A folding camera. Over the course of his career, he employed both large format cameras, and smaller Rolleiflex cameras. Beaton was never known as a highly adept technical photographer, and otherwise focused on staging a compelling model or scene and looking for the perfect shutter-release moment.
He was a photographer for the British edition of Vogue in 1931 past George Hoyningen-Huene, photographer for the French Vogue travelled to England once his new friend Horst. Horst himself would begin to perform for French Vogue in November of that year. The clash and furious pollination of ideas amongst this collegial circle of artists across the Channel and the Atlantic gave rise to the look of style and sophistication for which the 1930s are known.
Beaton is known for his fashion photographs and activity portraits. He worked as a staff photographer for Vanity Fair and Vogue in accessory to photographing celebrities in Hollywood. In 1938, he inserted some tiny-but-still-legible anti-Semitic phrases (including the word “kike”) into American Vogue at the side of an illustration nearly New York society. The issue was recalled and reprinted, and Beaton was fired.
Beaton returned to England, where the Queen recommended him to the Ministry of Information (MoI). He became a leading conflict photographer, best known for his images of the broken done by the German Blitz. His style sharpened and his range broadened, Beaton’s career was restored by the war.
Beaton often photographed the Royal Family for credited publication. Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother was his favourite royal sitter, and he as soon as pocketed her scented hankie as a keepsake from a highly rich shoot. Beaton took the famous wedding pictures of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (wearing an haute couture ensemble by the noted American fashion designer Mainbocher).
During the Second World War, Beaton was first posted to the Ministry of Information and total the task of recording images from the house front. During this assignment he captured one of the most permanent images of British misery during the war, that of 3-year-old Blitz victim Eileen Dunne recovering in hospital, clutching her beloved teddy bear. When the image was published, America had not nevertheless officially united the war, but images such as Beaton’s helped push the Americans to put pressure on their management to put up to Britain in its hour of need.
Beaton had a major influence upon and attachment with Angus McBean and David Bailey. McBean was a well-known portrait photographer of his era. Later in his career, his measure is influenced by Beaton. Bailey was influenced by Beaton later than they met while full of zip for British Vogue in the ahead of time 1960s. Bailey’s use of square format (6×6) images is thesame to Beaton’s own full of life patterns.[citation needed]
Stage and film design
After the war, Beaton tackled the Broadway stage, designing sets, costumes, and lighting for a 1946 revival of Lady Windermere’s Fan, in which he plus acted.[citation needed]
His costumes for Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady (1956) were terribly praised. This led to two Lerner and Loewe film musicals, Gigi (1958) and My Fair Lady (1964), each of which earned Beaton the Academy Award for Best Costume Design. He also intended the become old costumes for the 1970 film On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.
Additional Broadway credits include The Grass Harp (1952), The Chalk Garden (1955), Saratoga (1959), Tenderloin (1960), and Coco (1969). He is the recipient of four Tony Awards.[citation needed]
He expected the sets and costumes for a production of Puccini’s last opera Turandot, first used at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and subsequently at Covent Garden.[citation needed]
Beaton intended the academic dress of the University of East Anglia.
Diaries
Cecil Beaton was a published and renowned diarist. In his lifetime, six volumes of diaries were published, spanning the years 1922–1974. Recently some unexpurgated material has been published. “In the published diaries, opinions are softened, celebrated figures are hailed as wonders and triumphs, whereas in the originals, Cecil can be as venomous as anyone I have ever way in or heard in the most shocking of conversation” wrote their editor, Hugo Vickers.
Last update 2021-08-06