Queen Elizabeth II by Cecil Beaton

Sir Cecil Beaton was first invited to photograph Queen Elizabeth, consort of King George VI, in 1939. Over the next three decades, he was invited to photograph Queen Elizabeth II on many occasions, including her Coronation Day in 1953. An archive of Beaton's photographs, diaries, personal letters and press cuttings were bequeathed to the V&A in 1987 by his secretary, Eileen Hose.

  • Queen Elizabeth in Buckingham Palace Garden

    Queen Elizabeth, Buckingham Palace Garden, Cecil Beaton, 1939, Gelatin silver print. Museum no. E.1374-2010

    Queen Elizabeth, Buckingham Palace Garden
    Cecil Beaton
    1939
    Gelatin silver print
    Museum no. E.1374-2010

    Beaton struck up an instant rapport with the Queen. His diary reveals that she was an active participant in the staging of her romantic portraits, suggesting suitable dresses and accessories. Here, Beaton combined a painterly eye with the elegant style of his Vogue fashion studies. Like those, each royal portrait would be carefully retouched under Beaton's instruction, to define facial features and trim silhouettes.

  • Queen Elizabeth, Princess Elizabeth & Princess Margaret

    Queen Elizabeth, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, Buckingham Palace, Cecil Beaton, October 1942, gelatin silver print. Museum no. Ph.677-1987

    Queen Elizabeth, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret
    Cecil Beaton
    Buckingham Palace
    October 1942
    Gelatin Silver Print
    Museum no. Ph.677-1987

    This study of the family in simple dress was taken when Beaton was invited to photograph the visit of Mrs Franklin Roosevelt, the First Lady of the United States, to Buckingham Palace. It was perhaps intended to show the ordinariness of royalty, who, like other Britons, experienced food rationing during the war.

  • Princess Elizabeth, Buckingham Palace

    Princess Elizabeth, Cecil Beaton, Buckingham Palace, October 1942, gelatin silver print. Museum no. Ph.289-1987

    Princess Elizabeth, Buckingham Palace
    Cecil Beaton
    October 1942
    Gelatin silver print
    Museum no. Ph.289-1987

    Beaton found the 1942 sitting a challenging one. He wrote in his diary of his quest for originality and his desire to produce a 'composition that is not merely a pastiche of the past'. The sixteen year-old Princess Elizabeth posed in the Bow Room at Buckingham Palace, beside Winterhalter's portrait of Prince Leopold at the age of three months.

  • Princess Elizabeth as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards

    Princess Elizabeth as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, Cecil Beaton, Buckingham Palace, October 1942, gelatin silver print. Museum no. Ph.220-1987

    Princess Elizabeth as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, Buckingham Palace
    Cecil Beaton
    October 1942
    Gelatin silver print
    Museum no. Ph.220-1987

    In February 1942, the King appointed his fifteen-year-old daughter Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, the senior Regiment of the Foot Guards. It was the first time in history that a woman had held the position. The Princess wears an embroidered grenade in her cap and a blue enamelled and diamond brooch, the Regimental cypher, presented to her by the Regiment on her sixteenth birthday.

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