CECIL BEATON
Photograph by Cecil Beaton. Published in Vogue, September 15, 1968.less
Photograph by Cecil Beaton.
Published in Vogue, September 15, 1968.
In 1966, the photographer Cecil Beaton attended his friend Truman Capote’s Black
and White Ball at the Plaza Hotel. One can only imagine his thoughts as he surveyed
the Grand Ballroom from behind his plumed satin mask. There, among the
assembled glitterati, were the socialites, actors, writers, designers, and artists with
whom he’d shared many a sparkling conversation. Noël Coward. Tallulah Bankhead.
Gloria Guinness. Lee Radziwill. For nearly half a century, Beaton had captured them
for the pages of Vogue.
“The camera will never be invented that could capture or encompass all that he
actually sees,”[1] Capote once said of his friend, with whom he exchanged gossip.
What Beaton couldn’t catch on film, he immortalized in print, his witty words often
accompanied by an equally witty illustration. Beaton’s smart social observations were
published in Vogue, as well as in a series of books that excerpted the many diaries he
kept over his lifetim...more
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First in Vogue
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Born
London
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Died
January
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Vogue Covers8
December 15
1.
Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton born in Hampstead, London, to Ernest and Etty
Beaton. His father is a timber merchant, his mother the daughter of a blacksmith.
He will grow up with a younger brother, Reggie, and two younger sisters, Nancy
and Baba. Though raised in considerable comfort—servants, private schools—
young Cecil will be acutely aware of his family’s middle-class, nouveau-riche
status in caste-conscious England. “Even in my dreams I long to make Mummie a
society lady and not a housewife,”[9] he later writes in his diary.
2.
At three, Cecil is entranced by a picture postcard of actress Lily Elsie, an
Edwardian beauty with Cupid’s-bow lips. He will later date his interest in
photography to this moment. “The beauty of it,” he will write in his 1951 book,
Photobiography, “caused my heart to leap.”[10]
3.
Enters Heath Mount preparatory school. Classmate Evelyn Waugh will stick him
with pins and terrorize him on the playground. “He was an extremely pretty little
boy. The spectacle of his long eyelashes, wet with tears, was one to provoke the
sadism of youth,”[11] Waugh will later write.
Famed fashion photographer Sir Cecil Beaton was born on January 14, 1904, in London, England. As
a child, he adored the picture postcards of society ladies that came with the the Sunday newspaper.
In the 1920s, he was hired as a staff photographer for Vanity Fair and Vogue, where he developed a
unique style of posing sitters with unusual backgrounds. He was also a diarist, interior designer, and
Oscar-winning stage and costume designer. Beaton died in Broadchalke, Salisbury, Wiltshire,
England, on January 18, 1980.
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NAME: Cecil Beaton
OCCUPATION: Photographer, Writer
BIRTH DATE: January 14, 1904
DEATH DATE: January 18, 1980
EDUCATION: St. John's College, University of Cambridge
PLACE OF BIRTH: London, England, United Kingdom
PLACE OF DEATH: Broadchalke, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, United Kingdom
Full Name: Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton
AKA: Sir Cecil Beaton
AKA: Cecil Beaton
Best Known For
Sir Cecil Beaton was an English fashion photographer who is also known for his work as a diarist,
interior designer, and Oscar-winning stage and costume designer.
Beaton was born on 14 January 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 Esther or Etty, when
playing the lead in a play. She was the daughter of a Cumbrian blacksmith named Joseph
Sissons and had come to London to visit her married sister.[3] Through his maternal
grandmother, Elizabeth Oldcorn, Cecil was related to the Blessed Father Edward Oldcorne
who was involved in the Gunpowder Plot. Ernest and Etty Beaton had four children – in
addition to Cecil there were two daughters Nancy (1909–99, who married Sir Hugh Smiley)
and Barbara (1912–73, known as Baba, she married Alec Hambro), and another son Reginald
(1905–33).[4]
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 being overwhelmed by
the beauty of Beaton's singing at the St Cyprian's school concerts.[5][6] 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.[7]
Beaton attended 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 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."[8]
Beaton left Cambridge without a degree in 1925. After proving hopeless as an office
employee in his father's timber business, he spent 'many lugubrious months' learning to be an
office worker with a cement merchant in Holborn. This resulted only in 'an orgy of
photography at weekends' so he decided to strike out on his own.[9] Under the patrongage of
Osbert Sitwell he put on his first exhibition in the Cooling Gallery, London. It caused quite a
stir.
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.'[10]
For fifteen years between 1930 and 1945, Beaton leased Ashcombe House in Wiltshire,
where he entertained many notable figures.
In 1948 he bought Reddish House, set in 2.5 acres of gardens, approximately 5 miles to the
east in Broad Chalke. 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.[11] The upper floor had been equipped for illegal cock-fighting at the beginning of the
20th century but Beaton used the cages as wardrobes to store the costumes from his set
design of My Fair Lady. He remained at the house until his death in 1980 and is buried in the
churchyard.[12][13][14] In 1947, he also bought a townhouse at number 8 Pelham Place in
London.