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Luke Honey | Decorative Antiques, Chess, Backgammon & Games

Cecil Beaton’s Coronation

April 22, 2015

 

 

Day two of the Battersea Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair and all is well with the world. One of my favourite goodies on the stand is this splendid Cecil Beaton 1953 coronation photograph of Her Majesty The Queen, presented in the official dark blue leather Buckingham Palace frame with the monarch’s cipher tooled in gilt. 

Double whammy too, as it’s signed by both Cecil Beaton and Her Majesty.

Big fan of Beaton. The style reminds me of those wonderful Powell & Pressburger films; in a way we’re in Red Shoes territory: the theatrical Neo-Romanticsm of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s.  Beaton was harking back to the formal court portraiture of William Beachey, Joshua Reynolds and Franz Xaver Winterhalter.  I try to avoid using the word ‘iconic’ (overused, I fear), but if there was ever a genuine time to use it, this would be the moment.

 

 

 

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