Nancy Cunard. late 1920s

Paula Gellibrand, Marquesa de Casa Maury, 1928

Beaton's first models were his sisters Baba and Nancy. He dressed them up, made them up and set them, endlessly, in whimsical, romantic poses, using painted backgrounds, refIective surfaces and props to conjure up a fantasy of soft-focussed, shimmering, intangible beauty. He was greatly inspired by the flattering portraits of stage beauties made by the leading Edwardian theatrical photographers, and also by the work of the great fashion and portrait photographer Baron de Meyer whose lighting effects, haloes, diffused radiance and shimmering mists he sought tï emulate.
Very soon he was applying his skills to the task of making portraits ïf the leading lights of the artistic and fashionable scene of the twenties, the so-called 'Bright Young Things'.