Today is the 114th birthday of Cecil Beaton. He could evoke every emotion with his camera. His photographs are as breathtaking as they were the day they were taken and you feel like you are are part of them, you can feel the love, the sorrow, the loss, the opulence. The world is a better place because of Cecil Beaton was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.
NAME: Cecil Beaton
DATE OF BIRTH: January 14, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH: London
DATE OF DEATH: January 18, 1980
PLACE OF DEATH: Broad Chalke
PARENTS: Etty Sissons, Ernest Walter Hardy Beaton
EDUCATION: St John’s College, Cambridge, Harrow School
AWARDS: Academy Award for Costume Design, Academy Award for Best Art Direction
BEST KNOWN FOR: Sir Cecil Beaton was an English fashion photographer. He was also a diarist, interior designer and Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer.
Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton was born on January 14, 1904, in the Hampstead section of London, England. As a child, he adored the picture postcards of society ladies that came with the Sunday newspaper, and he had his two younger sisters pose for photos after receiving his first camera at age 11.
Beaton enrolled at the University of Cambridge’s St. John’s College in 1922, but he harbored little interest in academics, devoting much of his energy to photography and theater design. After leaving the school in 1925 without a degree, he briefly worked for his father, a timber merchant.
Seeking to pursue his interest in photography, Beaton sent photos to editors and fell in with the Bright Young Things, London’s bohemian crowd. He was eventually hired as a staff photographer for Vanity Fair and Vogue, where he developed a unique style of posing sitters with unusual backgrounds. Beaton published his first collection of works in 1930 with The Book of Beauty, and his fame grew to the point where he was tapped to photograph the wedding of the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Warfield in 1937 and Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953.
Beaton recorded the fighting in England, Africa and the Middle East for the British Ministry of Information during World War II, his famous photo of a hospitalized 3-year-old air-raid victim named Eileen Dunne gracing the cover of Life magazine. He resumed shooting portraits of the rich and famous after the war ended, but also spent more time nurturing his passion for costume and set design. Proving highly adept in this field, Beaton won Tony Awards for his costume work for My Fair Lady (1957) and Coco (1970), and nabbed Oscars for Gigi (1958) and the big screen adaptation of My Fair Lady (1964).
Beginning in the 1960s, Beaton released a series of diaries that documented his relationships with royalty and celebrities over previous decades. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1972.
In 1974, Beaton suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. Although he learned to paint and operate his photography equipment with his left hand, he grew concerned about his future, and arranged for Sotheby’s London to sell his life’s work later in the decade.
Four days after turning 76, Beaton died of a heart attack on January 18, 1980, at his manor in Broadchalke, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England.
