Cecil Beaton (1904-1980)

CECIL BEATON AND GARY COOPER, HOLLYWOOD, early 1930s. Vintage silver gelatin print, pasted down to card previously part of one of Beaton's personal sketchbooks, image size 242 x 188mm, card size 290 x 222mm, annotated in ink by Beaton 'Cecil & Gary in the Early Thirties' lower margin recto, with further annotations in an unknown hand; affixed to card verso is also a photograph of a Christian Berard portrait of Beaton and a silver gelatin snapshot of the painting in process, 1938, with captions in Beaton's hand.

"Beaton first went to Hollywood in 1929 and was soon photographing the most important actors and actresses. Here the standards of beauty were beyond any definition he knew. “Nowhere else in the world are there gathered together so many conventionally beautiful people. The girl shutting the windows is Venus, disguised as an exquisite Madonna. The newspaper boy is a young Apollo. Every cashier-girl, with golden sausage curls, is even prettier than Mary Pickford.” - Cecil Beaton Studio Archive