Cecil Beaton - Photographs New York Thursday, October 7, 2021 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Cecil Beaton Studio Archive, Sotheby’s Parke Bernet, London
    Private Collection, Amsterdam
    Phillips, London, Collection of Corbeau and Renard Assembled by Gerd Sander, Part II, 17 May 2008, lot 118

  • Literature

    Corbeau & Renard, La trajectoire du regard, p. 120

  • Artist Biography

    Cecil Beaton

    British • 1904 - 1980

    Cecil Beaton was a highly celebrated British photographer who is perhaps best known for taking portraits of the colorful celebrities who composed the fashionable society of early-mid twentieth century London, all of whom were within his social circle. According to an autobiographical account, Cecil Beaton's relationship with photography began as a boy when he fell in love with picture postcards of the Edwardian theater actress Miss Lily Elsie. He took up photography at a young age, using his sisters Nancy and Baba as his primary subjects. Initially, Beaton sought to emulate pictures he saw in fashion magazines, especially the soft-focus technique used by Baron Adolphe de Meyer.

     

    In 1929 he moved to New York after signing a contract with American Vogue. Throughout the 1930s Beaton traveled extensively as a portrait photographer, spending time in Hollywood amongst the glitter and glamour of Hollywood film stars. When the Second World War began and focus turned towards its dangers and devastations, Queen Elizabeth II commissioned Beaton to document the ravages of the German blitz.  Following the War, in addition to taking photographs, in the late 1950s into the 1960s Beaton was involved in film as a stage and costume designer.  During this time, he designed the costume and set for the stage version of My Fair Lady (New York, 1956; London, 1958) and the film Gigi (1958). 

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121

Nikolas Nabokov

circa 1935
Gelatin silver print.
9 3/4 x 7 1/2 in. (24.8 x 19.1 cm)
Credit, ‘From the Cecil Beaton Studio, Sotheby’s Parke Bernet’ stamps, numbered 1/1 in ink, and notations in unidentified hands in pencil on the verso.

Estimate
$2,500 - 3,500 

Sold for $2,268

Contact Specialist

Sarah Krueger
Head of Department
+1 212 940 1225
skrueger@phillips.com

 

Vanessa Hallett
Deputy Chairwoman, Americas and Worldwide Head of Photographs
+1 212 940 1243
vhallett@phillips.com

Photographs

New York Auction 7 October 2021