Cecil Beaton: Portraits and Profiles

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Cecil Beaton was a fashion, portrait and war photographer, a diarist, painter, interior designer and an Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer. He is one of the most celebrated portrait photographers of the twentieth century and is renowned for his images of elegance, glamour and style.

Portraits by Beaton: Photographs and Diaries combines Beaton’s photographic and pen portraits. His images often flattered but his diaries and journals didn’t necessarily follow suit; he was described by Jean Cocteau as ‘Malice in Wonderland’. Grouped together chronologically in chapters on Bright Young Things, The War Years, High Society, Hollywood Royalty, and The Peacock Revolution, Beaton’s portraits offer insight, beauty, witty observations and a fascinating glimpse into his world.

Included are Fred Astaire, Mick Jagger, Marlon Brando (‘pallid as a mushroom, smooth-skinned and scarred, with curved feminine lips and silky hair, he seems as unhealthy as a lame duck. Yet his ram-like profile has the harsh strength of the gutter’), Maria Callas, Coco Chanel, Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn (‘she is like a portrait by Modigliani where the various distortions are not only interesting in themselves but make a completely satisfying composite’), Elizabeth Taylor, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe (‘she romps, she squeals with delight, she leaps on the sofa. It is an artless, impromptu, high-spirited, infectiously gay performance. It will probably end in tears’), Princess Grace, Queen Elizabeth and Winston Churchill.

Cecil Beaton’s life spanned many worlds and these are captured here through his fabulous photographs and incisive pen portraits.

From the Publisher

Cecil Beaton – Portraits and Profiles

Marilyn Monroe, 1956

“Miss Marilyn Monroe calls to mind the bouquet of a fireworks display, eliciting from her awed spectators an open-mouthed chorus of wondrous ‘Ohs’ and ‘Ahs’. She is as spectacular as the silvery shower of a Vesuvius fountain; she has rocketed from obscurity to become our post-war sex symbol – the pin-up girl of an age. And whatever press agentry or manufactured illusion may have lit the fuse, it is her own weird genius that has sustained her flight….In her presence, you are startled, then disarmed, by her lack of inhibition. What might at first seem like exhibitionism is yet counterbalanced by a wistful incertitude beneath the surface. If this star is an abandoned sprite, she touchingly looks to her audience for approval. She is strikingly like an over-excited child asked downstairs after tea. The initial shyness over, excitement has now got the better of her. She romps, she squeals with delight, she leaps on to the sofa. She puts a flower stem in her mouth, puffing on a daisy as though it were a cigarette. It is an artless, impromptu, high-spirited, infectiously gay performance. It will probably end in tears. February 1956” – C.B.

Arthur Miller, 1956

“…A few minutes’ conversation was enough to substantiate Arthur Miller as one of those strong personalities, ‘at home’ in the world – a hard worker who seems to know where he is going. He can also be unabashedly dewy. I showed him some photographs of his equally famous wife, to which he responded by muttering, ‘That looney babe’, and shaking his head with grins of admiration. The lines of Arthur Miller’s face are so deeply carved that it would be carrying coals to Newcastle to photograph him in a hard light. Softer shading suits his coarse-grained complexion. The day he came to be photographed he wore a two day stubble of beard, but it did not matter for his personality – he must surely know this – relies entirely on the play of expression in his eyes and about his mouth. Mr Miller has large, almost peasant hands, on which the wedding ring from a Cartier world seems oddly contrasting. Typical of the tall, gangling Yank, he may be weedy but is obviously wiry as well. This sum of form and feature, as caught in the lens eye, eminently captures the fulminating yet warm expression of the playwright’s personality. 1956” – C.B.

Elizabeth Taylor, 1957

Cecil was no fan of Elizabeth Taylor. When he was asked to photograph her in April 1968, he asked for the exorbitant fee of five thousand dollars and was delighted to be turned down: ‘She’s everything I dislike.’ But he had to photograph her at the Proust Ball in 1971, on which occasion he picked her apart, jewel by jewel.

Audrey Hepburn on set for the film of My Fair Lady, 1963

Like most people, Cecil adored Audrey Hepburn and was thrilled at the chance of dressing her for the film of My Fair Lady, aware that she was usually dressed by Givenchy. He was even more pleased to be allowed to photograph her for two days in a number of the clothes to be worn by the extras in the Ascot scene. He took 350 exposures.

Lillian Gish, 1929

“…Lillian Gish is an uncommonly lovely paradox. It is extraordinary that so unexpected and frail a blossom should flourish in Hollywood films of bedcots and ginghams, where films are generally of spangles and peroxide, and it is a pleasing contradiction – that Lillian Gish, that demure little damsel, should be an actress – a lady with a face made-up with grease-paint – that she should have her eyelashes mascaraed and that a box of cosmetics and powder should be near by all the time she is being a nun, a most devout nun who wears a pair of high-heeled shoes underneath her long robes. One of the most precious and inspiring beauties of her day, she is in no way significant or contemporary, for she is unique. Beside possessing rare, unearthly qualities that place her beyond mere aesthetic comparison, she is matchlessly proportioned, with arms and hands like slender plants. 1930” – C.B.

Eileen Dunne in the Hospital for Sick Children, 1940

Cecil was intensely patriotic and wished only to serve his country. Fortunately, through photography, he found a unique way of doing so. He began by offering to drive refugees to Wiltshire, and manning telephones in case of air-raid warnings, but this was small fry. It was Queen Elizabeth who admired some photos he took of evacuated children at Wilton and advised Cecil to seek a propaganda job. He joined forces with the Ministry of Information, then run by Kenneth Clark, with the loose commission of recording the effects of war in an artistic way. Some of his photographs created a stir, none more so than his picture of Eileen Dunne, the bombed-out girl in a hospital bed, with her head bandaged. Life magazine put it on their front cover for 23 September 1940.

Rudolf Nureyev, 1962

“The curtain went up to the music of Scriabin. The huge stage was empty except for the scarlet-shrouded object standing centre. A crack of applause broke from the audience. Here was the exile of the Soviet Union, subdued no longer. Suddenly the cloak moved more swiftly than the eye could follow, and was violently whisked away to reveal a savage young creature, half naked, with wild eyes on an ecstatic, gaunt face, and a long mop of flying, silk hair, rushing towards the footlights. The force and dynamic power of this unexpected figure was shocking and compelling. The dance upon which he had embarked was so strong in its impact that the theatre became an arena of electrified silence. The wild, faunlike creature, with the parted pout, was darting round the stage, dipping and weaving like a swallow, then turning in screws like a whiplash. Then he began slowly to weave, like the leaves of water-plants, but always with metallic resilience and strength..” – C.B.

Mick Jagger, Marrakech, 1967

Cecil relished the Rolling Stones for their originality and for their evident enjoyment of life, echoing what some of his generation had done in the 1920s. Cecil was so excited by Mick Jagger that he painted him from a photograph. He longed to meet him but when he did so, dismissed him for having no conversation, thought his ‘marvellous face’ was only for photography, and was convinced (wrongly, for once) that he would be a has-been by the age of twenty-five. Cecil had his best chance to observe the Stones when three of them materialised at the Mamounia Hotel in Marrakech where he was staying in March 1967. He was not especially interested in Keith Richards or Brian Jones – to the point that he mistook Richards for the drummer and named the latter Brian Forbes in his diary. But Mick Jagger engaged his closest attention.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Frances Lincoln; First Edition (October 1, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0711235503
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0711235502
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.7 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.75 x 1.13 x 11.25 inches