Cecil Beaton
London: The Cooling Galleries, c.1930. 1st Edition. 12mo, publisher's stapled salmon wraps lettered in orange.
Catalog published in conjunction with one of the earliest exhibitions of the work of celebrated artist and photographer Cecil Beaton, at the Cooling Galleries in London. Beaton took an interest in photography from an early age, receiving his first camera when was 11. He became one of the Bright Young Things, a group of bohemian aristocrats and socialites who served as inspiration for Evelyn Waugh’s 1930 novel Vile Bodies. The coterie included Waugh, Stephen Tennant, Nancy and Diana Mitford, Elizabeth Ponsonby, and others, with Beaton their unofficial photographer. The writer and BYT Osbert Sitwell funded and organized Beaton's first solo exhibition at London's Cooling Galleries in 1927. His second show at the gallery, circa 1930 (for which this checklist was published), catapulted Beaton's career, landing him in New York, where he was hired by US Vogue. Over the next thirty years, he contributed photos, illustrations, and writing to the magazine. This checklist comprises an appreciation by Sitwell ("[I]t is to his photographic portraits that the people of the next century will turn when they want to rediscover the character of this one, want to know not only how people looked, but how they desired to look") and a list of photos and paintings on display, including portraits of Edith Sitwell, Gary Cooper, Lilian Gish, Nancy Cunard, Serge Lifar, Fred and Adele Astaire, and others. Light rusting to staples, light toning and edgewear to wraps, two small faint stains to lower wrap. Near fine. Rare. Item #11330
$1,500.00