Beaton’s Bright Young Things

Back in the 1920s ‘Bright Young Things’ was a nickname given by the tabloid press of the time to a select band of bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in London. Amongst their number was an aspiring, self-taught, photographer called Cecil Beaton, who was mixing with the likes of actress Tallulah Bankhead, artist Rex Whistler, poet Edith Sitwell, composer William Walton and many others. Beaton was training his lens on many of them, which resulted in a series of portraits from the golden period between the two World Wars.

Almost a century after his first photograph was published in Vogue, in 1924, over 130 of Beaton’s images from this glamorous and stylish era feature in a new exhibition – Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things – planned at the National Portrait Gallery, London. The exhibition also features paintings by Beaton’s friends from that period and other ephemera, such as Beaton’s first ever camera, his magazines, scrapbooks, book jackets and letters.

To discover more about the exhibition AP spoke to its curator, Robin Muir, who has spent several years tracking down rarely seen Beaton photographs to include within the show. We also spoke to three major British photographers – John Swannell, Rankin and Jason Bell – to get an insight into the influence of Beaton, which endures 40 years after his death.

ROBIN MUIR, VOGUE ARCHIVIST & EXHIBITION CURATOR

Robin Muir is the archivist at Vogue magazine and is a contributing editor to the world-famous fashion magazine. He was previously photo editor ofBritish Vogue. He curated the major 2016 exhibition Vogue 100: A Century of Style for the National Portrait Gallery in London and wrote its accompanying book

What’s the timeline for this Cecil Beaton exhibition?

‘This exhibition starts in 1924. I chose 1924 because. He was 20 years old and it was a portrait of a fellow student at Cambridge University, playing the Duchess of Malfi. becomes his great patron all the way through his life. The very last [Beaton] pictures were still done for . In 1979 his last great fashion sitting was for Paris – he did the collections for them at the age of 75, so he had a very long association with the magazine.