Cecil Beaton Foreword by Osbert Sitwell.

Cooling's Galleries. London. [1927]. First edition. Paperback, small octavo; stapled beige wrappers with printed title. 16 pages including wrappers. Portrait frontispiece. English. 163x103mm. 0.1kg. Good; light shelf wear, light browning to wrappers and text pages, some staining affecting wrappers and first and last pages, occasional blue and red paint stains suggesting previous ownership by an artist. The catalogue for the very first exhibition of Cecil Beaton's photographs and drawings at the Cooling's Galleries in 1927. A rare surviving copy of an important Cecil Beaton document, with an early example of a Beaton photograph in print. The exhibition at the Cooling's Galleries on Bond Street was a huge boost for the career of the young Beaton and on the opening night the gallery was densely populated with those who had sat for him and those who wanted to. Osbert Sitwell provides a short introductory essay called Cecil Beaton's Photographs and Paintings. An Appreciation. He heaps praise upon Beaton's fresh and inventive approach to photography and staging. 32 paintings are listed, although it seems that these were drawings, portrait sketches and costume designs rather than finished paintings. 37 photographs are detailed and the sitters include Stephen Tennant, Edith Sitwell, Baba and Nancy Beaton, the Jungman Sisters, The Marquise de Casa Maury, Ottoline Morrell and Siegfried Sassoon. An experimental self-portrait showing Beaton's profile four ways is reproduced as the frontispiece. The exhibition marked the high point of Beaton's Bright Young Things era. The next year he would sail to New York and widen his photographic horizons with Vogue and Hollywood. [Vickers, Hugo. Cecil Beaton. The Authorised Biography. 1985. p.100-101; Muir, Robin. Cecil Beaton's Bright Young Things. 2020] Beaux Books specialises in fine and rare books on art and culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. We welcome questions about our books and we are happy to provide any extra images. Buy with confidence from an experienced bookseller.