Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton, CBE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Beaton

Sir Cecil Beaton, CBE, was an English fashion and portrait photographer, diarist, painter, interior designer and an Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre. He was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1970.

Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton, CBE (14 January 1904 – 18 January 1980) was an English fashion, portrait and war photographer, diarist, painter, interior designer and an Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre. He was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1970.[1][2] Contents [hide] 1 Biography 1.1 Career 1.1.1 Photography 1.1.2 Stage and film design 1.2 Diaries 1.3 Personal life 1.4 Honours, awards and medals 2 Work 2.1 Photographs 2.2 Bibliography 2.3 Further reading 2.4 Books 2.5 Archival Resources 2.6 Exhibitions 3 References 4 External links [edit]Biography

Beaton was born on 14 January 1904 in Hampstead the son of Ernest Walter Hardy Beaton (1867–1936), a prosperous timber merchant, and his wife Etty Sissons (1872–1962). His grandfather, Walter Hardy Beaton (1841–1904), had founded the family business of Beaton Brothers Timber Merchants and Agents, and his father followed into the business. Ernest Beaton was also an amateur actor and had met his wife, Cecil's mother Esther or Etty, when playing the lead in a play. She was the daughter of a Cumbrian blacksmith named Joseph Sissons and had come to London to visit her married sister.[3] Through his maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Oldcorn, Cecil was related to the Blessed Father Edward Oldcorne who was involved in the Gunpowder Plot. Ernest and Etty Beaton had four children – in addition to Cecil there were two daughters Nancy (1909–99, who married Sir Hugh Smiley) and Barbara (1912–73, known as Baba, she married Alec Hambro), and another son Reginald (1905–33).[4] Cecil Beaton was educated at Heath Mount School (where he was bullied by Evelyn Waugh) and St Cyprian's School, Eastbourne, where his artistic talent was quickly recognised. Both Cyril Connolly and Henry Longhurst report in their autobiographies being overwhelmed by the beauty of Beaton's singing at the St Cyprian's school concerts.[5][6] When Beaton was growing up his Nanny had a Kodak 3A Camera, a popular model which was renowned for being an ideal piece of equipment to learn on. Beaton's nanny began teaching him the basics of photography and developing film. He would often get his sisters and mother to sit for him. When he was sufficiently proficient, he would send the photos off to London society magazines, often writing under a pen name and ‘recommending’ the work of Beaton.[7] Beaton attended Harrow, and then, despite having little or no interest in academia, moved on to St John's College, Cambridge, and studied history, art and architecture. Beaton continued his photography, and through his university contacts managed to get a portrait depicting the Duchess of Malfi published in Vogue. It was actually George "Dadie" Rylands – "a slightly out-of-focus snapshot of him as Webster's Duchess of Malfi standing in the sub-aqueous light outside the men's lavatory of the ADC Theatre at Cambridge."[8] Beaton left Cambridge without a degree in 1925. After proving hopeless as an office employee in his father's timber business, he spent 'many lugubrious months' learning to be an office worker with a cement merchant in Holborn. This resulted only in 'an orgy of photography at weekends' so he decided to strike out on his own.[9] Under the patrongage of Osbert Sitwell he put on his first exhibition in the Cooling Gallery, London. It caused quite a stir. Believing that he would meet with greater success on the other side of the Atlantic, he left for New York and slowly built up a reputation there. By the time he left, he had 'a contract with Condé Nast Publications to take photographs exclusively for them for several thousand pounds a year for several years to come.'[10] For fifteen years between 1930 and 1945, Beaton leased Ashcombe House in Wiltshire, where he entertained many notable figures. In 1948 he bought Reddish House, set in 2.5 acres of gardens, approximately 5 miles to the east in Broad Chalke. Here he transformed the interior, adding rooms on the eastern side, extending the parlour southwards, and introducing many new fittings. Greta Garbo was a visitor.[11] The upper floor had been equipped for illegal cock-fighting at the beginning of the 20th century but Beaton used the cages as wardrobes to store the costumes from his set design of My Fair Lady. He remained at the house until his death in 1980 and is buried in the churchyard.[12][13][14] In 1947, he also bought a townhouse at number 8 Pelham Place in London. [edit]Career [edit]Photography Beaton designed book jackets and costumes for charity matinees, learning the professional craft of photography at the studio of Paul Tanqueray, until Vogue took him on regularly in 1927.[15] He also set up his own studio, and one of his earliest 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 skilled technical photographer, and instead 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 when George Hoyningen-Huene, photographer for the French Vogue travelled to England with his new friend Horst. Horst himself would begin to work for French Vogue in November of that year. The exchange and cross pollination of ideas between 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.[16] Beaton is best known for his fashion photographs and society portraits. He worked as a staff photographer for Vanity Fair and Vogue in addition to photographing celebrities in Hollywood. However 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 about New York society. The issue was recalled and reprinted at vast expense, and Beaton was fired.'[17] Humiliated, Beaton returned to England where the Queen recommended him to the Ministry of Information. He became one of Britain's leading war photographers, best known for his images of the damage done by the German blitz. His style sharpened and his range broadened, Beaton's career was restored by the war.[18] Beaton often photographed the Royal Family for official publication.[19] Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother was his favourite Royal sitter, and he once pocketed her scented hankie as a keepsake from a highly successful 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).

Whilst employed by the Ministry of Information Cecil Beaton took one of the iconic images of Winston Churchill as prime minister in 10 Downing Street. During the Second World War, Beaton was initially posted to the Ministry of Information and given the task of recording images from the home front. During this assignment he captured one of the most enduring images of British suffering during the war, that of three-year-old Blitz victim Eileen Dunne recovering in hospital, clutching her beloved teddy bear. When the image was published, America had not yet officially joined the war—but splashed across the press in the US, images such as Beaton’s helped push the American public to put pressure on their Government to help Britain in its hour of need.[7] Beaton had a major influence on and relationship with two other leading lights in British photography, that of Angus McBean and David Bailey. McBean was arguably the best portrait photographer of his era—in the second part of McBean's career (post-war) his work is clearly heavily influenced by Beaton, though arguably McBean was technically far more proficient in his execution. Bailey was also enormously influenced by Beaton when they met while working for British Vogue in the early 1960s, Bailey's stark use of square format (6x6) images bears clear connections to Beaton's own working patterns. [edit]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 also acted. His most lauded achievement for the stage was the costumes for Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady (1956), which led to two Lerner and Loewe film musicals, Gigi (1958) and My Fair Lady (1964), both of which earned Beaton the Academy Award for Costume Design. He also designed the period 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 winner of four Tony Awards. He also designed the sets and costumes for a production of Puccini’s last opera Turandot, first used at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and then at Covent Garden. He also designed the academic dress of the University of East Anglia.[20] [edit]Diaries Cecil Beaton was also a published and well-known diarist. In his lifetime six volumes of diaries were published, spanning the years 1922–1974. Recently a number of unexpurgated diaries have been published. These differ immensely in places to Beaton's original publications. Fearing libel suits in his own lifetime, it would have been foolhardy for Beaton to have included some of his more frank and incisive observations.[21] [edit]Personal life He was made a Knight Bachelor in the New Year Honours 1972.[22] Two years later he suffered a stroke that would leave him permanently paralysed on the right side of his body. Although he learnt to write and draw with his left hand, and had cameras adapted, Beaton became frustrated by the limitations the stroke had put upon his work. As a result of his stroke, Beaton became anxious about financial security for his old age and, in 1976, entered into negotiations with Philippe Garner, expert-in-charge of photographs at Sotheby's. On behalf of the auction house, Garner acquired Beaton's archive—excluding all portraits of the Royal Family, and the five decades of prints held by Vogue in London, Paris and New York. Garner, who had almost singlehandedly invented the photographic auction, oversaw the archive's preservation and partial dispersal, so that Beaton's only tangible assets, and what he considered his life's work, would ensure him an annual income. The first of five auctions was held in 1977, the last in 1980.

Reddish House By the end of the 1970s, Beaton's health had faded. In January 1980, he died at Reddish House, his home in Broad Chalke in Wiltshire, at the age of 76.[7] The great love of his life was the art collector Peter Watson, although they were never lovers. He had relationships with various men. He also had relationships with women, including the great Greta Garbo, the actress Coral Browne, the dancer Adele Astaire, and the British socialite Doris, Viscountess Castlerosse. [edit]Honours, awards and medals Tony Award for Best Costume Design for Quadrille (play) (1955) CBE (1956) Tony Award for Best Costume Design for My Fair Lady (1957) Fellow of the Ancient Monuments Society (1957) Academy Award for Costume Design for Gigi (1958) Tony Award for Best Costume Design for Saratoga (1960) Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur (1960) Academy Award for Best Art Direction for My Fair Lady (1964) Academy Award for Costume Design for My Fair Lady (1964) Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain (1965) Tony Award for Best Costume Design for Coco (musical) 1970 Knighthood (1972) [edit]Work

[edit]Photographs Sir William Walton, 1926 Stephen Tennant, 1927 Lady Diana Cooper, 1928 Charles James (designer), 1929 Lillian Gish, 1929 Oliver Messel, 1929 Lord David Cecil, 1930 Lady Georgia Sitwell, 1930 Gary Cooper, 1931 Molly Fink, 1926 Pablo Picasso, 1933 Marlene Dietrich, 1935 Salvador Dalí, 1936 Natalie Paley, 1936 Aldous Huxley, 1936 Daisy Fellowes, 1937 Helen of Greece and Denmark, Queen Mother of Romania, 1937 Queen Sita Devi of Kapurthala,1940 Bomb Victim (Elienn Dunne), 1940 Winston Churchill, 1940 Graham Sutherland, 1940 Charles de Gaulle, 1941 Walter Sickert, 1942 Maharani Gayatri Devi, Rajmata of Jaipur, 1943 John Pope-Hennessy, 1945 Isabel Jeans, 1945 Greta Garbo, 1946 Yul Brynner, 1946 Vivien Leigh, 1947 Marlon Brando, 1947 Duchess of Windsor, 1951 Vita Sackville-West, 1952 C.Z. Guest, 1952 Graham Greene, 1953 Elizabeth II's Coronation, 1953 Alexis von Rosenberg, Baron de Redé, 1953 Elizabeth Taylor, 1954 Grace Kelly, 1954 Mona von Bismarck, 1955 Bernard Berenson, 1955 Joan Crawford, 1956 Mrs. Charles (Jayne Wrightsman), 1956 Maria Callas, 1956 Dame Edith Sitwell, 1956 Colin Wilson, 1956 Marilyn Monroe, 1956 Leslie Caron, 1957 Dolores Guinness, 1958 Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, 1960 Albert Finney, 1961 Cristobal Balenciaga, 1962 Lee Radziwill, 1962 Karen Blixen, 1962 Rudolf Nureyev, 1963 Audrey Hepburn, 1964 Margot Fonteyn, 1965 Jacqueline Kennedy, 1965 Sheridan Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 5th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, 1965 Jamie Wyeth, 1966 Georgia O'Keeffe, 1966 Andy Warhol, 1967 Twiggy, 1967 Mick Jagger, 1968 Katharine Hepburn, 1969 Barbra Streisand, 1969 Gloria Guinness, 1970 Hubert de Givenchy, 1970 Mae West, 1970 David Hockney, 1970 Jane Birkin, 1971 Marie-Hélène de Rothschild, 1971 Marisa Berenson as Luisa Casati, 1971 Jacqueline de Ribes, 1971 Pauline de Rothschild, 1972 Tina Chow, 1973 Gilbert and George, 1974 Inès de la Fressange, 1978 Paloma Picasso, 1978 Caroline of Monaco, 1978 Olimpia de Rothschild, 1978 Dayle Haddon, 1979 [edit]Bibliography My Royal Past, 1939 Ashcombe: The Story of a Fifteen-Year Lease, 1949 Photobiography, 1951 Persona Grata, 1953 Indian Diary and Album The Glass of Fashion My Bolivian aunt: a memoir Chinese Diary and Album Japanese, 1959 Ballet Portrait of New York Self-portrait with Friends: the Selected Diaries of Cecil Beaton, 1926–1974 The wandering years; diaries, 1922–1939 Cecil Beaton's The Years Between Diaries, 1939–44 The strenuous years, diaries, 1948–55 The restless years: diaries, 1955–63 The parting years: diaries, 1963–74 The Unexpurgated Beaton: The Cecil Beaton Diaries as He Wrote Them, 1970–80 Beaton in the Sixties: The Cecil Beaton Diaries as He Wrote Them, 1965–69 Cecil Beaton's 'Fair Lady' (diary excerpts and costume sketches), 1966. The face of the world: an international scrapbook of people and places. I take great pleasure Quail in Aspic: the Life Story of Count Charles Korsetz [edit]Further reading [edit]Books Spencer, Charles (1995). Cecil Beaton Stage and Film Designs. London: Academy Editions. ISBN 1-85490-398-5. Vickers, Hugo (1985). Cecil Beaton. New York: Donald I. Fine. ISBN 1-55611-021-9. Vickers, Hugo (2003). The Cecil Beaton Diaries, as They Were Written. New York. ISBN 0-7538-1702-0. [edit]Archival Resources Cecil Beaton Papers, 1904–1980 (0.4 linear feet) are housed at Princeton University Library [edit]Exhibitions Major exhibitions have been held at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 1968 and in 2004. The first international exhibition in thirty years, and first exhibition of his works to be held in Australia was held in Bendigo, Victoria from 10 December 2005 to 26 March 2006. In October 2011, the BBC's Antiques Roadshow featured an oil portrait by Beaton of rock star Mick Jagger, whom Beaton meet in the 1960s. The painting, originally sold at the Le Fevre Gallery in 1966, was valued for insurance purposes at £30,000.[23] An exhibition celebrating The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and showing portraits of Her Majesty by Cecil Beaton, opens in October 2011 at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle. Cecil Beaton: Theatre of War at the Imperial War Museum, London: major retrospective of Beaton's war photography, held from 6 September 2012 – 1 January 2013