Cecil Beaton
Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton was a British fashion, portrait and war photographer, diarist, painter, and interior designer, as well as costume designer and set designer for stage and screen. His accolades include three Academy Awards and four Tony Awards.
Early life and education
Beaton was born on 14 January 1904 in Hampstead, north London, the son of Ernest Walter Hardy Beaton, a prosperous timber merchant, and his wife, Esther "Etty" Sisson. His grandfather, Walter Hardy Beaton, had founded the family business of "Beaton Brothers Timber Merchants and Agents", and his father followed into the business. Ernest Beaton was an amateur actor and met Etty when playing the lead in a play. She was the daughter of a Cumbrian blacksmith named Joseph Sisson and had come to London to visit her married sister.Ernest and Etty Beaton had four children – Cecil; two daughters, Nancy Elizabeth Louise Beaton and Barbara Jessica Beaton ; and another son, Reginald Ernest Hardy Beaton.
Cecil Beaton was educated at Heath Mount School 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.
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.
Beaton attended Harrow School, 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, got 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." Beaton left Cambridge in 1925 without a degree.
Career
After a short time in the family timber business, he worked with a cement merchant in Holborn. This resulted in "an orgy of photography at weekends", so he decided to strike out on his own. Under the patronage of Osbert Sitwell he put on his first exhibition in the Cooling Gallery, London.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."
From 1930 to 1945, Beaton leased Ashcombe House in Wiltshire, where he entertained many notable figures.
In 1947, he bought the 17th-century Reddish House, set in 2.5 acres of gardens, approximately to the east in Broad Chalke, in Wiltshire near Salisbury. 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. He remained at the house until his death in 1980 and is buried in the parish church graveyard.
Photography
Beaton designed book jackets, and costumes for charity matinees, learning the craft of photography at the studio of Paul Tanqueray, until Vogue took him on regularly in 1927. He 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.File:Roystrong.jpg|thumb|Portrait of Sir Roy Strong, Director and Secretary of the Victoria and Albert Museum
Beaton's first camera was a Box Brownie. 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 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 associated with the 1930s.
Beaton is 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. In 1938, he inserted some tiny-but-still-legible anti-Semitic phrases into American Vogue at the side of an illustration about New York society. The issue was recalled and reprinted, and Beaton was fired.
Beaton returned to England, where the Queen recommended him to the Ministry of Information. He became a leading war photographer, best known for his images of the damage done by the German Blitz. With his style sharpened and his range broadened, Beaton's career was restored by the war.
Beaton often photographed the Royal Family for official publication. 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. He photographed Princess Margaret in a cream Dior dress for her 21st birthday in 1951, which became one of the most iconic royal portraits of the 20th century.
File:Cecil Beaton Photographs- Political and Military Personalities; Chahnaz, Princess of Iran, Fawzieh, Queen of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi CBM2404.jpg|thumbnail|left|Queen Fawzia Fuad Chirine with Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and their daughter, Princess Shahnaz Pahlavi, in Tehran during the Second World War. Photo by Cecil Beaton.
During the Second World War, Beaton was first posted to the MoI 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 3-year-old Blitz victim Eileen Dunne recovering in hospital, clutching her beloved teddy bear. When the image was published, America had not yet joined the war, but images such as Beaton's helped push the Americans to put pressure on their government to help Britain in its hour of need.
Beaton had a major influence on and relationship with Angus McBean and David Bailey. McBean was a well-known portrait photographer of his era. Later in his career, his work was influenced by Beaton. Bailey was influenced by Beaton when they met while working for British Vogue in the early 1960s. Bailey's use of square format images is similar to Beaton's own working patterns.
In 1968, the National Portrait Gallery in London mounted its inaugural photographic exhibition Beaton Portraits 1928-68. Furthermore, it was the first time a retrospective for a living photographer's work was shown at a British national museum. The exhibition, which was viewed by over 80,000 people, featured themed rooms with photographs of the royal family, war heroes, authors, composers, and celebrities. The exhibition travelled to the United States and was displayed as 600 Faces by Beaton 1928-69 at the Museum of the City of New York in 1969. A week before the New York opening, Beaton photographed Andy Warhol and members of his Factory as a last-minute addition to the show.
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 costumes for Lerner and Loewe's musical play My Fair Lady were highly praised. This led to him being the designer for two Lerner and Loewe film musicals, Gigi and My Fair Lady, each of which earned Beaton the Academy Award for Best Costume Design. He also designed the period costumes for On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.
His additional Broadway credits include The Grass Harp, The Chalk Garden, Saratoga, Tenderloin, and Coco. He was the recipient of four Tony Awards.
He designed the sets and costumes for a production of Giacomo Puccini's last opera Turandot, first used at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and then at Covent Garden.
Beaton designed the academic dress of the University of East Anglia.
Diaries
Cecil Beaton was a published and well-known diarist. In his lifetime, six volumes of diaries were published, spanning the years 1922–1974. A more selective but unexpurgated edition was published in 2003. Hugo Vickers, its editor, commented: "In the published diaries, opinions are softened, celebrated figures are hailed as wonders and triumphs, whereas in the originals, Cecil can be as venomous as anyone I have ever read or heard in the most shocking of conversation."Last public interview
The last public interview given by Sir Cecil Beaton was in January 1980 for an edition of the BBC's radio programme Desert Island Discs. The interviewer was Roy Plomley. The recording was broadcast posthumously on Friday 1 February 1980 following the Beaton family's permission. Owing to Beaton's frailty, the interview was recorded at Beaton's home, Reddish House.Beaton, though frail, recalled events in his life, particularly from the 1930s and 1940s. Among the recollections were his associations with stars of Hollywood and British Royalty notably The Duke and Duchess of Windsor ; and official portraits of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Elizabeth II on her Coronation day on 2 June 1953. The interview also alluded to a lifelong passion for performing arts and in particular ballet and operetta.
The Beaton programme is considered to be almost the final words on an era of "Bright Young Things" whose sunset had taken place by the time of the abdication of Edward VIII. Beaton commented specifically on Wallis Simpson. The Duchess of Windsor was still alive at the time of the original Beaton interview and broadcast.
Beaton said that the one record that he would retain on the desert island should the others get washed away would be Beethoven's Symphony No 1, and his chosen book was a compendium of photographs he had taken down the years of "...people known and unknown; people known but now forgotten".