A lavish new exhibition in London devoted to the ground-breaking trend photographer …
Cecil Beaton was a person of many abilities – a trend illustrator, Oscar-winning costume designer, social caricaturist, stylist, decorator, dandy, skilled occasion goer and perceptive author. However, he’s primarily recognized for his trend pictures, incomes him the title, “The King of Vogue”. He photographed among the twentieth century’s most iconic figures for each the UK and US editions of the journal together with Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando.
Worldly Colour (Charles James night attire), 1948. Cecil Beaton Studio Archive.
Many of those portraits characteristic in a brand new exhibition on the National Portrait Gallery, London, curated by photographic historian and Vogue contributing editor Robin Muir. The exhibition explores Beaton’s contribution to trend, charting his meteoric rise and distinguished legacy, and likewise demonstrating his signature model. His good friend Truman Capote referred to as this, “Cecil’s lacquered luminosity”.
Cecil Beaton, c 1963. Cecil Beaton Studio Archive.
Remarkably, he was nearly totally self-taught; his images had been a wedding of Edwardian stage portraiture, European surrealism and American modernism, all filtered by way of an English sensibility. “I do not believe in taking people as they are,” he as soon as mentioned and this nostalgic tender focus was typically in distinction to the sharpness of his tongue – in his diaries he usually eviscerated topics, particularly Princess Margaret.
Elizabthe Taylor, 1955. Cecil Beaton Studio Archive.
The exhibition contains roughly 250 objects together with images, letters, sketches and costumes, and follows Beaton’s profession as a baby experimenting along with his first digital camera on his earliest topics, his two sisters and mom (c 1910), to his years as a scholar at Cambridge University, and his images of excessive society patrons comparable to Stephen Tennant and the Sitwell siblings.
Hepburn in costume for My Fair Lady, 1963. Cecil Beaton Studio Archive.
The exhibition additionally focuses on London of the Nineteen Twenties and Nineteen Thirties, the period of the “Bright Young Things”. Beaton’s first commissions for Vogue had been to doc these years, photographing legends of Hollywood in its Golden Age. His first royal images appeared within the late Nineteen Thirties. As the Second World War loomed, he outlined the notion of the monarchy for a contemporary age. Appointed an official warfare photographer by the Ministry of Information, his wartime service took him across the globe.
No exhibition on Beaton could be full with no portrait of Hepburn in My Fair Lady, 1963. This is taken into account Beaton’s biggest triumph – he designed the costumes and units for the musical on stage and in a while display.
The Second Age of Beauty is Glamour (go well with by Hartnell), 1946. The Conde? Nast Archive, London.
In hindsight, it’s simple to see how Beaton influenced a brand new era of trend photographers, particularly Tim Walker and Mario Testino. Curator Robin Muir says his affect is far-reaching: “Beaton’s impact spans the worlds of fashion, photography and design. Unquestionably one of the leading visionary forces of the British 20th century, he also made a lasting contribution to the artistic lives of New York, Paris and Hollywood.”
After perusing the exhibition, pop up in The Portrait Gallery Restaurant by Richard Corrigan – a sublime setting with an incredible view over the capital.
Need to know: Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World is on the National Portrait Gallery, London from October 9 to January 11 2026.
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