This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| Please note: Artists not classified as American in our database may have limited biographical data
compared to the extensive information about American artists.
 Sir Cecil Walter Beaton was an English fashion and portrait
photographer, diarist, style icon, interior designer and an Academy
Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre.
He was born on January 14, 1904 in Hampstead the son of Ernest
Walter Hardy Beaton (1867–1936), a prosperous timber merchant, and his
wife Etty Sissons (1872–1962). His grandfather, Walter Hardy Beaton
(1841–1904) had founded the family business of Beaton Brothers Timber
Merchants and Agents, and his father followed into the business. Ernest
Beaton was also an amateur actor and had met his wife, Cecil's mother,
when playing the lead in a play. She was the daughter of a Cumbrian
blacksmith who had come to London to visit her married sister. They
had four children - in addition to Cecil there were two daughters Nancy
(1909–1999) and Baba (1912–1973), and another son Reggie (1905–1933).
Cecil Beaton was educated at Heath Mount School (where he was bullied
by Evelyn Waugh) and St Cyprian's School, Eastbourne, where his
artistic talent was quickly recognised. Both Cyril Connolly and Henry
Longhurst report in their autobiographies of 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 went on to Harrow, 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 managed to get a
portrait sitting with the Duchess of Malfi — actually George "Dadie"
Rylands, and as Beaton recalled years later: "It was 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." The resulting images gave Beaton his first ever piece of
published work when Vogue magazine bought and printed the photos.
Beaton left Cambridge without a degree in 1925, but only coped with
salaried employment in his father's timber business for eight
days.
His brother Reggie, however, entered the business and remained until
his
death in October 1933. For fifteen years between 1930 and 1945, Beaton
leased Ashcombe House in Wiltshire, where he entertained many notable
figures.
Beaton designed book jackets and costumes for charity matinees,
learning the professional craft of photography at the studio of Paul
Tanqueray, until Vogue took him on regularly in 1927. He also 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.
He was a photographer for the British edition of Vogue in 1931 when
George Hoyningen-Huene, photographer for the French Vogue traveled 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 for which the 1930s are known.
Beaton is best 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.
Beaton's first camera was a Kodak 3A folding camera. 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.
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 (wearing an ensemble by the noted fashion
designer Mainbocher).
During the Second World War, Beaton was initially posted to the
Ministry of Information 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 three-year-old
Blitz victim Eileen Dunne recovering in hospital, clutching her beloved
teddy bear. When the image was published, America had not yet
officially joined the war—but splashed across the press in the US,
images such as Beaton’s helped push the American public to put pressure
on their Government to help Britain in its hour of need.
Beaton had a major influence on and relationship with two other leading
lights in British photography, that of Angus McBean and David Bailey.
McBean was arguably the best portrait photographer of his era—in the
second part of McBean's career (post-war) his work is clearly heavily
influenced by Beaton, though arguably McBean was technically far more
proficient in his execution. Bailey was also enormously influenced by
Beaton when they met while working for British Vogue in the early
1960s, Bailey's stark use of square format (6x6) images bears clear
connections to Beaton's own working patterns.
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 most lauded achievement for the stage was the costumes for Lerner
and Loewe's My Fair Lady (1956), which led to two Lerner and Loewe film
musicals, Gigi (1958) and My Fair Lady (1964), both of which earned
Beaton the Academy Award for Costume Design. He also designed the
period costumes for the 1970 film On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.
Additional Broadway credits include The Grass Harp (1952), The Chalk
Garden (1955), Saratoga (1959), Tenderloin (1960), and Coco (1969). He
is the winner of four Tony Awards.
He also designed the sets and costumes for a production of Puccini’s
last opera Turandot, first used at the Metropolitan Opera in New York
and then at Covent Garden.
He also designed the academic dress of the University of East Anglia.[8]
Cecil Beaton was also a published and well-known diarist. In his
lifetime six volumes of diaries were published, spanning the years
1922–1974. Recently a number of unexpurgated diaries have been
published. These differ immensely in places to Beaton's original
publications. Fearing libel suits in his own lifetime, it would have
been foolhardy for Beaton to have included some of his more frank and
incisive observations.
In 1972, he was knighted. Two years later he suffered a stroke that
would leave him permanently paralysed on the right side of his body.
Although he learnt to write and draw with his left hand, and had
cameras adapted, Beaton became frustrated by the limitations the stroke
had put upon his work. As a result of his stroke, Beaton became anxious
about financial security for his old age and, in 1976, entered into
negotiations with Philippe Garner, expert-in-charge of photographs at
Sotheby's. On behalf of the auction house, Garner acquired Beaton's
archive—excluding all portraits of the Royal Family, and the five
decades of prints held by Vogue in London, Paris and New York. Garner,
who had almost singlehandedly invented the photographic auction,
oversaw the archive's preservation and partial dispersal, so that
Beaton's only tangible assets, and what he considered his life's work,
would ensure him an annual income. The first of five auctions was held
in 1977, the last in 1980.
By the end of the 1970s, Beaton's health had faded to that of an old
man. In January 1980, he died during the night at Reddish House, his
home in Broad Chalke in Wiltshire, at the age of 76.
The great love of his life was the art collector Peter Watson, although
they were never lovers. He had relationships with various men, and
claimed to have had an affair with the American actor Gary Cooper, who
was a close friend of his for many years. He also had
relationships with women, including the actresses Greta Garbo and Coral
Browne, and the British socialite Doris, Viscountess Castlerosse.
Source:
Wikipedia: Cecil Beaton
References:
Charles Spencer, Cecil Beaton Stage and Film Designs. London: Academy Editions, 1995
Hugo Vickers, Cecil Beaton. New York: Donald I. Fine. 1985
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Biography from Heritage Auctions:
| Please note: Artists not classified as American in our database may have limited biographical data
compared to the extensive information about American artists.
He went to New York in 1929, and signed a contract for Vogue
magazine. Many of his images from this period have a fantastic or
Surrealistic look. He did not place the emphasis on the person or
the clothing, creating instead fanciful backgrounds using materials
such as cellophane or mirrors to create an atmospheric effect.
During the 1930s he photographed well-known cultural and society
figures, such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Queen Elizabeth
II. Beaton was commissioned by the Ministry of Information to
take photographs of London and British RAF bases during World War II.
He produced images of war torn cities, his most famous image of this
period being a picture of wounded child clutching a toy, which was
chosen for the cover of "Life" magazine in 1941.
During the 1950s and 1960s, his work concentrated on mostly the theater
and cinema, creating costume and sets for the stage productions of Gigi (1958) and My Fair Lady (1964). He was knighted in 1971.
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