Cecil Beaton's Bright Young Things by Robin Muir

The child of a suburban, middle-class family with aspirations for much, much more, Beaton began by photographing his sisters and his mother in flamboyantly theatrical settings, starting in 1914, eventually becoming the primary society photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair. Featured image, captioned 'Paula Gellibrand, Marquesa de Casa Maury against sequined curtains, 1928,' is reproduced from 'Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things.' PRAISE AND REVIEWSįROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 'Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things' is NEW from National Portrait Gallery, London Before Warhol and his Superstars, there was British photographer Cecil Beaton and the Bright Young Things-a notorious band of irreverent, glamorous and seemingly carefree artists and aristocrats of 1920s and 30s London that gathered around his delirious orbit, awaiting their moment before his lens. His influence on portrait photography was profound and lives on today in the work of many contemporary photographers. Also well known as a diarist, Beaton became a society fixture in his own right. Beaton quickly developed a reputation for his striking and fantastic photographs, which culminated in his portraits of Queen Elizabeth in 1939. Beaton’s photographs are complemented by a wide range of letters, drawings, book jackets and ephemera, and contextualised by artworks created by those in his circle, including Christopher Wood, Rex Whistler and Henry Lamb.Ĭecil Beaton (1904–80) is one of the most celebrated British portrait photographers of the 20th century and is renowned for his images of elegance, glamour and style.

Among this glittering cast are Beaton’s socialite sisters Baba and Nancy Beaton, Stephen Tennant, Siegfried Sassoon, Evelyn Waugh and Daphne du Maurier. In a series of themed chapters, covering Beaton’s first self-portraits and earliest sitters to his time at Cambridge and as principle society photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair, over 50 leading figures who sat for Beaton are profiled and the dazzling parties, pageants and balls of the period are brought to life. In 1920s and ‘30s Britain, Cecil Beaton used his camera and his larger-than-life personality to mingle with that flamboyant and rebellious group of artists, writers, socialites and partygoers who became known as the “Bright Young Things.” Famously fictionalized by the likes of Evelyn Waugh (in Vile Bodies), Anthony Powell and Henry Green, these men and women cut a dramatic swathe through the epoch and embodied its roaring spirit. The stylish and extravagant world of the “Bright Young Things” of 1920s and ’30s London, seen through the eye of renowned British photographer Cecil Beaton

Cecil Beaton's Bright Young Things by Robin Muir