KCR Winter 2025 2026 Mag V3 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 15
Cover Story: Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable
World at the National Portrait Gallery
Cecil Beaton was an extraordinary force of twentieth century
creativity. Throughout his career, he amassed an illustrious catalogue
of sitters, with his work featuring the most famed 昀椀gures across
screen, society and culture, including Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn
Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, Salvador Dali, and Queen
Elizabeth II. Elevating portrait photography to an art form, his era
de昀椀ning photographs captured the beauty, glamour and star power of
the interwar and early post-war eras
Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World will be the 昀椀rst major exhibition to
exclusively spotlight his ground-breaking fashion photography, the
core of his illustrious career which laid the foundation for his later
successes. Chronicling his most impactful years, the exhibition is a
showcase of opulence, celebrity and glamour, capturing subjects as
they had never been before through Beaton’s singular vision.
A life-long aesthete, Beaton’s interest in the worlds of society life and
fame began in his youth. He had an early obsession with Edwardian
feminine glamour and the beauty of the stars of the stage. Using the
Kodak A3 given to him for his 12th birthday, he embarked on early
photographic experimentations that would bring his 昀椀xations to life
and o昀昀er the 昀椀rst hints of what would become his signature
photographic style.
His earliest sitters were his sisters, Nancy and Baba (Barbara),
and mother, Etty (Esther); his 昀椀rst studio, the family front room.
Recognising early the transformative power of the prop, in Beaton’s
front room sessions curtain poles, carpets, bedsheets and table lamps
would forgo their intended purposes and become ornaments in
elaborate backdrops for these early portraits. This boundless
imagination and novel use of unconventional objects and sets, along
with an endless dedication to immortalising beauty, would be
enduring threads in the tapestry of Beaton’s creative life.
Resentful that he didn’t hail from a distinguished and storied
aristocratic family, Beaton had always craved the enchantment and
excitement of society life and made great e昀昀orts to elevate his family
name. He used his portraits to position Nancy and Baba as society
ornaments, bringing them celebrity and auspicious marriages. And,
an astute relationship builder, Beaton would leverage his creative
talent and access to 昀氀amboyant aristocrats and socialites to fortify the
foundations upon which he would be build the extraordinary life for
which he felt destined.
With access to high society patrons like the eccentric Stephen
Tennant and the Sitwell siblings, he gained entry to a world he had
thus far only ever observed from the sidelines. By the end of his
career, he had graduated beyond ‘insider’ to an authority and arbiter
on creative and social life in British and American high society. He
became a key image maker for Vogue, the British monarchy and the
stars of a burgeoning Hollywood, producing visionary and timeless
photographs for each. In his wartime photography too, he treated
those he photographed as actors within the theatre of war, capturing
the heroic beauty in the everyday people he photographed.
Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World will follow Beaton’s career from
its inception in his childhood living room to the era of the ‘Bright
Young Things’ and Beaton’s 昀椀rst commissions for this greatest patron,
Vogue; his travels to New York and Paris in the Jazz Age and the
starry lights of Golden Age Hollywood, to his royal photography and
the glittering success of his costume and set designs for My Fair Lady.
Almost entirely self-taught, Beaton established a singular
photographic style; a marriage of Edwardian stage portraiture,
emerging European surrealism and the modernist approach of the
great American photographers of the era, all 昀椀ltered through a
determinedly English sensibility.
Visit The National Portrait Gallery Website:
www.npg.org.uk
