Cecil Beaton: The Royal Portraits

by Roy Strong

Quarto, Blue Cloth, Dust Jacket, B & W And Color Photos, Beaton And His Photos Of The Family Members Of The House Of Windsor

Genres: Royalty, Photography, Nonfiction

228 pages, Hardcover

First published September 19, 1988

About the author

Sir Roy Colin Strong FRSL (23 August 1935 - ) is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer.

He has been director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He was knighted in 1983.

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had this since it was first published in 1988 and have read it many times. It was my first introduction to the artistic brilliance of Cecil Beaton. Gorgeous photos of the Royals.

[Jay Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book with great quality but with some flaws: some photographs could have been in coulours and the text hardly brings any emotions.

[Bo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cecil Beaton: The Royal Portraits compiles famed photographer Cecil Beaton’s photographs of members of the British Royal Family taken between the 1920s and the 1970s. While it is “coffee table book” in style, it is also worth reading cover-to-cover for its substance. Claudia Acott Williams weaves an engaging narrative about the arc of Beaton’s career as a royal photographer that contextualizes the photographs and the critical but ever-varying role they played in shaping the Royal Family’s presentation of itself to the public.

Beaton began photographing members of the Royal Family in the 1920s, starting with an elderly daughter of Queen Victoria, but the majority of his work’s sitters were the core members of the Royal Family from the middle decades of the century: George VI and the Queen Mother, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (a.k.a. the former King and Wallis Simpson), Elizabeth II and her family, and members of the various branches of the Windsor clan that comprise the outer orbit of the extended royal family today (the Snowdons, Gloucesters, Kents, and Ogilvys).

The photographs themselves are stunning. Beaton was an impressive artist who brought out the elegance and personality of his sitters, and just viewing the photographs without text would be well worth your time. However, Acott Williams does an impressive job of adding to the experience by setting the scene for us and explaining the significant role the photographs played in helping the Royal Family, often grappling with what its role and value were to the British public throughout the 20th Century, shape how the public perceived them. We see Beaton’s style progress and change not only with his own artistic development, but to match the evolving needs of the Royal Family over the years, ranging from the need to portray the steadfastness and sense of service and shared sacrifice of the Royal Family during WWII era, to the need to present the Queen as a symbol of both stability and accessibility during the social tumult of the late 1960s. In addition to providing overviews of the needs and challenges the Royal Family faced in various eras (and how photography was used in response), Acott Williams supplies us with insight into the details of the various sittings, Beaton’s own thoughts on his work, and the relationships between the photographer and his sitters.

Thames & Hudson and the Victoria and Albert Museum have created a beautiful book that also provides an interesting history of Beaton’s role in shaping the public image of the Royal Family. I highly recommend it if you have any interest in the 20th Century British history, the Royal Family, or photography.

[Cathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Library of Congress Catalog No. 62-19318 c/1963 The Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc., a subsidiary of Howard W. Sams & Co., Inc. Oversize, Cold Spring Harbor Library.