Royal Portrait by Cecil Beaton (1904-1980). One of twenty-two contact print photographs; which has been cut out, arranged and mounted on card. Depicting Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II), Buckingham Palace, 1945.

One of twenty-two contact print photographs; which has been cut out, arranged and mounted on card. Depicting Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II), Buckingham Palace, 1945. Seated, three-quarter length, with her hands held together in her lap, she looks downwards in contemplation. She is wearing a pale chiffon gown and a double-string pearl necklace. A backdrop depicts an enlarged and adapted section of an unidentified winter scene; which Beaton reported in his diary as being a work by the British painter Reginald John [Rex] Whistler (1905-1944).

Bequeathed to the Museum in 1987 by Eileen Hose, secretary to the photographer

[Catalogue entry] in: Whistler, Laurence. The Work of Rex Whistler. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1960. p. 91, cat. no. 560.

Laurence records the following in reference to a version of the backdrop by Rex Whistler used in this image within the category: 'Periodicals: Illustrations and Decorations':

'The Tatler
November 22nd 1935

"Winter": a full-page drawing. A wintry scene with skaters on a pond in the middle distance. In the foreground, reclining on a cartouche inscribed "Winter", an aged nude man, his left arms resting on a jar from which water pours and freezes into icicles on the edge of the cartouche. A rook on a leafless bough above him. The whole in a frame twined with barren twigs. The reproduction was used by Cecil Beaton as a background for a photographic portrait of the music hall artist, Miss Nellie Wallace, and for others."'

Cecil Beaton photographed members of the royal family from 1930-1979.

PH.9275V-1987