A contemporary look at Cecil Beaton's portraits of the Royal Family and how they helped create the public face of the House of Windsor.

Cecil Beaton: The Royal Portraits looks back in time to tell a very modern tale: the creation of a public image. Offering a fresh appraisal of Beaton's portraits of the British royal family, the book explores not only the finished images but also the sittings in which they were created, revealing Beaton's central role in shaping the public face of the House of Windsor and the ways in which he collaborated with his subjects.

Organised chronologically, from the 1930s to the 1970s, each of the book's four chapters comprises an introductory essay, plates with extended captions, and one or two in-depth analyses of a particular sitting. Throughout, a variety of contextual material - contact sheets, test shots, out-takes, sketches, letters, journals, tear-sheets - helps build a detailed picture of Beaton's working methods, the relationships he developed with his sitters, and how the eventual portraits were received.

Drawing on the Victoria and Albert Museum's unparalleled collection of Beaton's photographs, Cecil Beaton: The Royal Portraits will appeal not only to those interested in the photographer and his work, but also to anyone for whom the distinction between the private world and the public face of the royal family remains a source of fascination.

About the Author

Claudia Acott Williams is a collections curator at Historic Royal Palaces, specializing in royal, court and dress history from the 18th century to the present day. Currently the Curator of Kensington Palace, she is responsible for the presentation of the palace interiors and the displayed and stored collections. Exhibitions she has curated or co-curated include Victoria: A Royal Childhood, Victoria Revealed, Diana: Her Fashion Story and Fashion Rules: Restyled. She is also the author of The Crown in Focus: Two Centuries of Royal Photography, published by Merrell in 2020.

Cecil Beaton (1904–1980) is one of the most celebrated British Portrait photographers of the twentieth century and is renowned for his images of elegance, glamour and style. His influence on portrait photography was profound and lives on today in the work of many contemporary photographers.

In the 1920s and 30s Beaton used his camera, his ambition and his larger-than-life personality to mingle with a flamboyant and rebellious group of artists and writers, socialites and partygoers whose spirit and style cut a dramatic swathe through the epoch.

This miniature cocktail book presents a selection of dazzling and delectable infusions, inspired by the ‘Bright Young Things’ with whom Beaton mixed, illustrated with Beaton’s own unique, often humorous sketches and drawings. Featuring highballs, coolers, slings and fizzes fit to please any Lord, Lady or Viscountess, this book and its recipes bring to life a deliriously eccentric, glamorous and creative era.

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Accompanying a major new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, this souvenir book features a dazzling array of cocktail recipes inspired by the glittering friends, acquaintances and sitters of famed British photographer Cecil Beaton in the 1920s and 30s, illustrated with Beaton’s own witty and distinctive drawings which featured in Vogue.

A private view of the genius of Cecil Beaton, reflected through the lens of his town and country idylls, and his passion for interior design, gardening, and entertaining a circle of Bright Young Things.

Cecil Beaton (1904–1980) was one of twentieth-century Britain’s Renaissance men: photographer, costume designer, set designer, playwright, creator of fashion fabrics, and writer on raffiné interiors and the personalities who inhabited them. He also happened to be a fine interior decorator. Cecil Beaton at Home focuses on two homes dear to Beaton’s heart — Ashcombe House, near the Wiltshire village of Tollard Royal, and Reddish House, located in Broad Chalke, another village in the same county — as well as London's Pelham Place and Beaton’s New York hotel suites. Simultaneously a retreat, an inspiration, a photographer’s studio, and a stage for impressive entertaining, Beaton’s country homes also fueled his passion for art, gardening, and delight in village life. Against his often-extravagant interiors, Beaton’s private life unfolds—his unique talent for self-promotion, desire for theatricality, and uncertain pursuit of love. This lavishly illustrated visual biography brings together original photographs, artworks, and possessions from his interiors to present an intimate picture of Beaton’s extraordinary life.

About the Author:

Andrew Ginger is the managing director of Beaudesert Limited. Combining twenty years of experience in interiors at the highest level with a Cambridge art historical background, Ginger has also acted as designer for the growing house collection of archive document handprints for the last ten years. Hugo Vickers is an English writer and broadcaster who has written biographies of many twentieth-century figures, including the Queen Mother, Cecil Beaton, and Vivien Leigh, and a study of Greta Garbo.

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Пролистать книгу Cecil Beaton at Home: An Interior Life

Cecil Beaton (1904–1980) is one of the most celebrated British Portrait photographers of the twentieth century and is renowned for his images of elegance, glamour and style. His influence on portrait photography was profound and lives on today in the work of many contemporary photographers.

Beaton used his camera, his ambition and his larger-than-life personality to mingle with a flamboyant and rebellious group of artists, writers, socialites and partygoers. These ‘Bright Young Things’ captured the spirit of the roaring twenties and thirties as they cut a dramatic swathe through the epoch. Beaton quickly developed a reputation for his beautiful, often striking and fantastic photographs, which culminated in his portraits of Queen Elizabeth in 1939. More than a photographer, Beaton became a society fixture in his own right.

In a series of themed chapters, covering Beaton’s first self-portraits and earliest sitters to his time at Cambridge and as principle society photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair, over 60 leading figures who sat for him are profiled and the dazzling parties, pageants and balls of the period are brought to life. Among this glittering cast are Beaton’s socialite sisters Baba and Nancy Beaton, Stephen Tennant, the Mitfords, Siegfried Sassoon, Evelyn Waugh and Daphne Du Maurier. Beaton’s photographs are complemented by a wide range of letters, drawings and ephemera and contextualised by artworks created by those in his circle, including Christopher Wood, Rex Whistler and Henry Lamb.

This book presents the iconic photographer's expert and witty reminiscences of the personalities who inspired fashion's golden eras, and left an indelible mark on his own sense of taste and style.

"The camera will never be invented that could capture or encompass all that he actually sees," Truman Capote once said of Cecil Beaton. Though known for his portraits, Beaton was as incisive a writer as he was a photographer. First published in 1954, The Glass of Fashion is a classic--an invaluable primer on the history and highlights of fashion from a man who was a chronicler of taste, and an intimate compendium of the people who inspired his legendary eye. Across eighteen chapters, complemented by more than 150 of his own line drawings, Beaton writes with great wit about the influence of luminaries such as Chanel, Balenciaga, and Dior, as well as relatively unknown muses like his Aunt Jessie, who gave him his first glimpse of "the grown-up world of fashion." It is both a treasury and a treasure.

About the Author:

Sir Cecil Beaton (1904-1980) was a photographer in the 1920s for Vanity Fair and Vogue. As a portraitist, he photographed the stars of fashion, society, and the art worlds, and was considered the unofficial court photographer of the British royal family. He was also an Oscar-winning stage and costume designer. Hugo Vickers is Beaton's official biographer and literary executor. He has lectured about him all over the world and assisted with the many exhibitions devoted to Beaton.

A kind of master of ceremonies to the British Empire, fashion and society photographer Cecil Beaton depicted the high and low of the century with his signature elegance and panache: the British Royal family, the nobility, the London bohemian, and the New York underground. This volume, a comprehensive survey of his work, is now available again in a hardcover edition.

Photographer, costume designer, avid diarist - Cecil Beaton was also a 'romantic royalist' whose glittering photographs of Queen Elizabeth II became among the most widely published portraits of the twentieth century. This fascinating book explores Beaton's long relationship with the Queen and the royal family and describes how his royal portraits shaped the monarchy's public image from the 1930s to the late 1960s. It is a celebration of Beaton, the enduring flair of his portraits, and the myriad sources of inspiration that resulted in photographs so powerful that they moulded the world's perception of a princess, monarch and mother.

The definitive book on the legendary photographer's life in New York City, with many never-before-seen images and reminiscences by his closest friends and confidants.  

From the 1930s, when he helped revolutionize fashion journalism, through the 1960s, when he launched headlong into the Pop art era, London-based photographer Cecil Beaton brought to New York City his own perspective - aristocratic, sexually ambiguous, and theatrical. At the same time, New York offered Beaton innumerable opportunities to reinvent himself and his career.

Cecil Beaton: The New York Years features sketches, costumes, set designs, previously unpublished letters, and over 220 photographs and drawings, many in color and never seen before. This volume documents Beaton's most influential relationships with quintessential figures of the New York art scene, including Greta Garbo, his female confidant and muse, and Andy Warhol. Richly illustrated, Cecil Beaton is the definitive portfolio chronicling Beaton's stunning career in fashion, portraiture, and the performing arts.  The book will be divided into five parts:

Beaton in Vogue: Beaton's photography for Condé Nast's Vogue in the 1930s hastened the decline of fashion illustration in favor of today's emphasis on photography. Beaton himself became a celebrity photographer, as famous as his subjects, in the later mold of Richard Avedon and Annie Leibovitz.

Beaton and the Stage: After World War II, Beaton appeared on the New York stage as an actor, and he also designed sets and costumes for such musicals as My Fair Lady and Coco and operas Vanessa and La Traviata, both at the Metropolitan Opera. 

Beaton on New York: Beaton produced many illustrated books on New York City and his tell-all diaries detailed his life among the city's best-known figures. Beaton was also commissioned to produce innumerable photographs of New Yorkers, from Truman Capote to Tom Wolfe.

Beaton on Garbo: Greta Garbo was Beaton's closest female friend  She was also his muse, and his photographs captured her in many different scenarios and moods from the mid-1940s, when she ended her Hollywood career and permanently moved to New York.

Beaton on Warhol: In 1968, Beaton was advised to photograph a group of young New Yorkers, the most famous of which was Andy Warhol and his Factory. In effect, this photo shoot charted the passing of the torch from Beaton to Warhol, two figures who defined their era's concepts of popular culture, celebrity, and sexual mores.

About the Author:

Donald Albrecht is the Museum of the City of New York's curator of architecture and design. He has contributed essays to a number of books about architecture and design, including Andree Putman: Complete Works and Gabellini: Architecture of the Interior.

Born in England in 1904, Sir Cecil Beaton is one of the most significant photographers of the 20th century. This eccentric multi-talented individual also worked as a designer and novelist. Responsible for the ground-breaking and much-imitated glamour portrait, Beaton’s subjects included Pablo Picasso, Coco Chanel, Audrey Hepburn, Maria Callas, Sir Winston Churchill, and the British Royal family. In 1939, he took a detour from the world of high style and produced some of the most memorable images of Britain in the war years. After the war, he continued his work as a portrait photographer, but started to design costumes for Hollywood films, winning an Oscar for "My Fair Lady". In the 60’s Beaton gave fresh life to his photographic style, with portraits of Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger, and many Hollywood legends.

* A comprehensive overview of one of the 20th century’s great photographers
* An important documentary record of the finest historical and celebrity photography by a master of the medium