Hugh Cecil.
Privately published. Grafton Street, London. No date [1920s]. Bound folio, covered with coloured paper with a repeating semi-circular motif. 8 leaves. Tipped-in printed title on hand-made paper, 6 sepia-tinted original photographs tipped onto hand-made paper mounted on page. Photographs measure approx. 24 x 18.5cm. English. 400 x 285mm. 0.75kg. . Very good; the photographs have been well preserved within the folio, some slight uneven toning to lower margin of four of the images; binding has slight wear to spine ends and forecorners, some uneven fading to boards.
An unusual album of original portraits by society photographer Hugh Cecil. Cecil was active during the 1910s and 1920s and is well-known for his royal portraits of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) and George VI. With a studio in London he was perfectly placed to photograph the Bright Young Things and his images perfectly encapsulate the glamour, beauty and fashion of the period. Three of the portraits within this present folio also feature in Cecil's A Book of Beauty published in 1926 and can be identified as Baroness Kathleen Moncheur, Natacha Rambova and Nancy Kenyon. The other three sitters remain unknown. It is probable that this album was produced to act as an advertisement for Cecil's portrait work. It is unclear how many copies of the book were produced, but it's hand-made nature suggests only a handful. Not recorded in OCLC.
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