20thC; Beaton Cecil

Black and white fashion photograph of a seated lady in a black dress with black choker and gloves, with drapery and chandier behind.

Within a few years of leaving university, Cecil Beaton was working full time on his artistic ventures, establishing himself as a designer for the theatre and ballet and a successful ‘society’ photographer. Beaton had also begun to publish small books on themes which interested him. They incorporated his drawings and photographs and included The Book of Beauty (1931) and Cecil Beaton’s New York (1938). In 1939 he took a series of highly romanticised photographs of Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother). They mark the beginning of Beaton’s long career as a royal photographer which continued until 1979. His photographs were an important part of the promotion of the ‘new’ Royal Family in the press. Beaton continued theatre design and magazine commissions during the war and also undertook work for the British government. In 1942 he flew to Cairo to take photographs for the Ministry of Information and then travelled on to China. After the war Beaton resumed his increasingly successful career as designer and photographer, as well as publishing a series of books of his wartime work. He also designed sets and costumes for Hollywood films such as Gigi (1957) and My Fair Lady (1963), for which he won two Oscars in 1964. He continued to paint and photograph throughout the 1970s, even after a severe stroke in 1974. He died in 1980.

This fashion photograph showing the model Mary Taylor was taken by the society photographer Cecil Beaton in the mid-1930s. The dress and the long gloves, necklace, hairstyle and posy refer to the 19th century rather than to the high modern style which was fashionable at the time. Beaton has styled the setting to reflect the slightly retrospective style of dress, using draped lace, the sculpture and the shadow of the chandelier (behind the plain fabric of the backdrop). Together, the setting, accessories and the sweetness of Mary Taylor’s face (which is highlighted by the halo of light which Beaton had positioned round her head) serve to create a strong sense of romanticism. If you look closely at the image you can see a seam running across the centre of the backdrop and shadows of lighting equipment in the lower right hand corner. Faults like these would have been retouched out of the image when Beaton’s fashion photographs were published.

191-1977