THE KING OF VOGUE

High society photographer Cecil Beaton captured film stars, models and royals at their most glamorous and unguarded. As his legendary work features in a dazzling new exhibition, DOMINIC BLISS hails his extraordinary eye for an image

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FOR DECADES, Cecil Beaton photographed models and celebrities for the world's best-known fashion magazine, where he was known as the “King of Vogue”. But his ever-creative eye led him into a huge variety of other artistic ventures.

At one time or another, he worked as a costume designer, set designer, fashion illustrator, war photographer, diarist and caricaturist. His royal portraits of the Queen Mother, Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII, Princess Margaret, and the future Queen Elizabeth II and Charles III remain some of the defining shots of the era.

“I was very slow in finding a vocation and I think I took a shot in every direction,” he once admitted. “I don’t get stale. By the time I’m through one particular job, and I come to another one, I approach it with complete freshness. I think that’s a great advantage.”

Now Beaton's extraordinary range of skills are on display at a new exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery. Called Cecil Beaton's Fashionable World, its depth and range prove why he was one of the most celebrated photographers and style luminaries of the 20th century.

Among his portraits on display are images of actors such as Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Marlon Brando, Gary Cooper, John Wayne and Liz Taylor; artists such as Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Salvador Dalí; dancer Fred Astaire; boxer Sugar Ray Robinson; and writers Truman Capote and Jean Cocteau. There's also a section dedicated to royalty and another to Second World War photography.

“There was nobody else like him,” says Robin Muir, the curator. “His impact spans the worlds of fashion, photography and design. Unquestionably one of the leading visionary forces of the British 20th century, he also made a lasting contribution to the artistic lives of New York, Paris and Hollywood.”

Muir says it was Beaton's tenure at Vogue — on both sides of the Atlantic — that cemented his reputation as a truly great photographer.