It explores the beginning of his professional relationship with Princess Elizabeth, taking informal solo portrait photographs of her and family photographs with her mother and sister. The exhibition, in five parts, opens with ‘Princess Elizabeth and the portrait tradition’, an introduction to Beaton in 1942 as photographer to Queen Elizabeth (later The Queen Mother) and King George VI. The show explores Beaton’s depictions of The Queen in her roles of princess, monarch and mother.
She has chosen around 100 photographs to accompany extracts from Beaton’s diaries and pages from his press cuttings books, interwoven with audio recordings, archival films and royal memorabilia.
Susanna Brown, Curator of Photographs at the V&A, is curator of this exhibition and author of its accompanying book Queen Elizabeth II: Portraits by Cecil Beaton (2011). It includes 45 volumes of Beaton’s press cuttings, some of which are highlights of this display. The V&A owns the Cecil Beaton Collection, bequeathed to the museum in 1987, which contains 18,000 of Beaton’s original prints, transparencies and negatives dating from the early 1930s until 1979, the year before his death. His photographs of the Royal Family defined their public persona and were among the most widely published photographs of the 20th century. It looks at the life of Queen Elizabeth II through the lens of royal photographer Cecil Beaton (1904–80), from his early portraits of The Queen when she was a teenage princess to his last portrait of her taken in 1968. The exhibition is the V&A’s contribution to the celebration of The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee year. ‘Queen Elizabeth II by Cecil Beaton: A Diamond Jubilee Celebration’, will remain on display until 22 April 2012. In the week that Her Majesty The Queen commemorated the 60th year of her accession to the throne on 6 February 1952, her Diamond Jubilee was celebrated at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London, by the opening of a stunning exhibition of photography and film.
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