Cecil Beaton - The Royal Portraits

A collection of the finest portraits ever created of the British Royal Family. Over a period of nearly 50 years Cecil Beaton photographed almost every member of the Royal House of Windsor. His friendship with Wallis Warfield Simpson led to his taking the photographs for her marriage to the Duke of Windsor in 1937, and he naturally assumed that such a connection would preclude him from further royal commissions. Instead, George VI and Queen Elizabeth chose him to create an entirely new image for the Royal Family. His romantic treatments were developed over the next twenty years, culminating with the splendid pageantry of Elizabeth II's Coronation, for which Beaton was the official photographer. In the decade that followed he produced sumptuous portraits of royal glamour that have not been matched. Then, as the Royal Family sought a more relaxed image in the 1960s, Beaton responded with a series of charming informal studies of the Queen with her children. This selection have been chosed from an archive of nearly ten thousand vintage prints...