The Imperial War Museum in London is staging an exhibition of the war photographs of Cecil Beaton, who lived near Salisbury.
Image from Amazon
Beaton is best known for his more glamorous work. He took definitive portraits of the current Queen, and photographed film stars such as Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe and Yul Brynner. He worked for both ‘Vogue’ and ‘Vanity Fair’, and he did the stage design for ‘My Fair Lady’.
However, during the war years he was commissioned by the Ministry of Information as a war photographer. He traveled through the Middle East, India, China and Burma, documenting what he saw.
Perhaps his most famous war photo was taken not in the Far East, but in London. It is that of a young child in hospital clutching her teddy bear. Wikipedia says this about the image:
he captured one of the most enduring images of British suffering during the war, that of three-year-old Blitz victim Eileen Dunne recovering in hospital, clutching her beloved teddy bear. When the image was published, America had not yet officially joined the war—but splashed across the press in the US, images such as Beaton’s helped push the American public to put pressure on their Government to help Britain in its hour of need.Cecil Beaton – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This might be an exaggeration, but Beaton’s war photographs are undoubtedly powerful.
I can’t reproduce the photos here[1], but I’ve collected some links to sites which do have the images:
- Imperial War Museums
- BBC NEWS | In Depth | Photo Gallery | Cecil Beaton: Portraits
- Cecil Beaton: Theatre of War, Imperial War Museum, review – Telegraph
- A Cecil Beaton photograph of the navigator working at his chart table – Imperial War Museum Prints
- Cecil Beaton: Preserving the Legacy | Imperial War Museums
The exhibition runs from September 6th until January 1st. The Imperial War Museum is a 20-30 minute walk from Waterloo. From memory, it’s perhaps not the nicest part of London to walk through – but a taxi would be pretty cheap.
Cecil Beaton and Salisbury
Cecil Beaton moved to the Salisbury area in 1930, when he leased Ashcombe House[2].
In 1945, he moved to Reddish House in Broadchalke[3], where he remained for the rest of his life. I saw a previous Beaton exhibition at the Barbican, which said that he was particularly proud that his roses won prizes in the Broadchalke Village Flower Show – the certificates were on display in the Exhibition.
Beaton was part of a ‘social set’ in the area which included Rex Whistler, Stephen Spender, Clarissa Churchill and her husband the Prime Minister Anthony Eden.
Cecil Beaton died in 1980 and is buried in Broadchalke churchyard. He is commemorated in the name of a row of houses in the village, called ‘Beaton Cottages’.
Reviews
These are some reviews of the exhibition:
- Oh what a lovely war: the other side of Cecil Beaton – guardian.co.uk
- Cecil Beaton: Theatre of War, Imperial War Museum, London – FT.com
- Cecil Beaton: Theatre of War, Imperial War Museum, review – Telegraph
Update:Salisbury Museum tweeted that they are planning a Cecil Beaton exhibition in 2014. Can’t wait!