It was a challenging task for Susanna Brown, curator of photographs at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, to sift through Cecil Beaton’s entire archive of royal portraits, some 18,000 photographs and negatives. Beaton captured the royal family so wonderfully on many different occasions.
The current photographs on display in the exhibition “Queen Elizabeth II by Cecil Beaton” have been carefully refined to around 100 portraits. She says her selection was led by a desire to tell the story of Beaton’s long and enduring relationship with the monarchy, while capturing some of the key moments in the life of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
The portraits are arranged in five parts, showing a distinct shift between Beaton’s photographic styles. The early portraits of princess Elizabeth are romantic and painterly, with rococo-inspired backdrops, and sometimes incorporate flowers picked from his own garden. His later images were much more simple in composition, and included the natural and intimate moments of the Queen with her children. These tender portraits became particularly iconic.
