Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things

Robin Muir author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:National Portrait Gallery Publications

Published:12th Mar '20

£35.00

Available to order, but very limited on stock - if we have issues obtaining a copy, we will let you know.

Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things cover

Accompanying a major new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, this book celebrates the portraits by renowned British photographer Cecil Beaton of the 'Bright Young Things' who flourished between the two World Wars. Featuring a glittering procession of celebrities, socialites and bohemian artists, captured with Beaton's inimitable elegance it brings to life a deliriously eccentric, glamorous and creative era of British cultural life.

Cecil Beaton (1904–1980) is one of the most celebrated British Portrait photographers of the twentieth century and is renowned for his images of elegance, glamour and style. His influence on portrait photography was profound and lives on today in the work of many contemporary photographers.

Beaton used his camera, his ambition and his larger-than-life personality to mingle with a flamboyant and rebellious group of artists, writers, socialites and partygoers. These ‘Bright Young Things’ captured the spirit of the roaring twenties and thirties as they cut a dramatic swathe through the epoch. Beaton quickly developed a reputation for his beautiful, often striking and fantastic photographs, which culminated in his portraits of Queen Elizabeth in 1939. More than a photographer, Beaton became a society fixture in his own right.

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 60 leading figures who sat for him are profiled and the dazzling parties, pageants and balls of the period are brought to life. Among this glittering cast are Beaton’s socialite sisters Baba and Nancy Beaton, Stephen Tennant, the Mitfords, Siegfried Sassoon, Evelyn Waugh and Daphne Du Maurier. Beaton’s photographs are complemented by a wide range of letters, drawings and ephemera and contextualised by artworks created by those in his circle, including Christopher Wood, Rex Whistler and Henry Lamb.

'An upmarket coffee table affair. Robin Muir… does a neat job of introducing the rich, famous and posh characters whom the young Beaton photographed, and their world of parties, pageants, charity matinees, evenings of tableaux vivants' - The Times
'A brilliant selection of snaps of Cecil dandified and dressed up, as well as his celebrity portraits, which appear here alongside pages from his scrapbooks, quick, elegant sketches of costume ideas and Muir’s fascinating biographies of the people Beaton photographed and partied with. (????) ' - Daily Express
'Beaton adored being at the centre of this wild and frivolous world. He made friends everywhere.' - Tatler
'Snapshot of a beautiful brittle world… A great deal of care has been taken by Robin Muir to dunk you fully into this world.' - Daily Telegraph

ISBN: 9781855147720

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 1780g

280 pages