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By: Andrew Ginger
An intimate and richly visual portrait of Cecil Beaton’s life, loves, and creative world. Featuring beautiful, often unseen photographs taken by Beaton and his late-life partner Kinmont Hoitsma, alongside the affectionate and revealing letters they exchanged, this book uncovers new depths to one of the twentieth century’s most fascinating figures. Through images of his homes, travels, and relationships, it reveals the artist in full—romantic, restless, and endlessly inspired.
In 1963, the acclaimed royal and celebrity photographer, Academy Award–winning designer, and celebrated diarist, Cecil Beaton (1904–1980), was at the peak of his career, filming My Fair Lady in Hollywood. Dispirited by forty years of largely unrequited bisexual relationships, quite unexpectedly, he discovered love with an American ex-Olympian fencer, art historian, and teacher, Kinmont Hoitsma, thirty years his junior, whom he met at the Tool Box bar in San Francisco. Beaton’s romantic life had been complicated by disappointment and the fear of exposure to the shame or blackmail that criminalized homosexuality entailed in Britain at the time. Hoitsma, by contrast, enjoyed a completely liberated life of uncompromising honesty in the embryonic gay scene of San Francisco.
Hoitsma knew nothing of Beaton’s world and he challenged Beaton to set aside his constructed persona to experience an authentic masculine connection to the full. Defying the legality and convention of the times, they lived happily together for a year at Cecil’s home in Wiltshire, before accepting reluctantly that a long-term domestic union was unlikely to succeed. Beaton’s finely ordered world and elegant home setting left Hoitsma no room to contribute equally. Though they lived apart from then on, they remained close until Beaton’s death in 1980. In this carefully researched book, Beaton’s bond with Hoitsma becomes the prism through which we gain a glimpse into the photographer’s personal life and the contrasting influences that shaped his artistic vision.
Rounding out this exceptional book and completing the image of a man whose creative world was shaped as much by his camera as by his cultivated environments—are images from Beaton’s other passion—the arts. Beaton’s life was a vivid tapestry woven from the threads of his artistic passions—interior design, fashion, the theater—each deeply informing his aesthetic vision. His homes, like Ashcombe House and Reddish House, were not just residences but living canvases, where his passion for interior design played out in opulent fabrics, curated antiques, and whimsical details. Gardening offered him a quieter, organic form of creativity, grounding his flair for visual composition in nature’s palette. Together, these disciplines not only shaped Beaton’s art but reflected his belief that beauty could—and should—be orchestrated in every facet of life.
An intimate and richly visual portrait of Cecil Beaton’s life, loves, and creative world. Featuring beautiful, often unseen photographs taken by Beaton and his late-life partner Kinmont Hoitsma, alongside the affectionate and revealing letters they exchanged, this book uncovers new depths to one of the twentieth century’s most fascinating figures. Through images of his homes, travels, and relationships, it reveals the artist in full—romantic, restless, and endlessly inspired.
In 1963, the acclaimed royal and celebrity photographer, Academy Award–winning designer, and celebrated diarist, Cecil Beaton (1904–1980), was at the peak of his career, filming My Fair Lady in Hollywood. Dispirited by forty years of largely unrequited bisexual relationships, quite unexpectedly, he discovered love with an American ex-Olympian fencer, art historian, and teacher, Kinmont Hoitsma, thirty years his junior, whom he met at the Tool Box bar in San Francisco. Beaton’s romantic life had been complicated by disappointment and the fear of exposure to the shame or blackmail that criminalized homosexuality entailed in Britain at the time. Hoitsma, by contrast, enjoyed a completely liberated life of uncompromising honesty in the embryonic gay scene of San Francisco.
Hoitsma knew nothing of Beaton’s world and he challenged Beaton to set aside his constructed persona to experience an authentic masculine connection to the full. Defying the legality and convention of the times, they lived happily together for a year at Cecil’s home in Wiltshire, before accepting reluctantly that a long-term domestic union was unlikely to succeed. Beaton’s finely ordered world and elegant home setting left Hoitsma no room to contribute equally. Though they lived apart from then on, they remained close until Beaton’s death in 1980. In this carefully researched book, Beaton’s bond with Hoitsma becomes the prism through which we gain a glimpse into the photographer’s personal life and the contrasting influences that shaped his artistic vision.
Rounding out this exceptional book and completing the image of a man whose creative world was shaped as much by his camera as by his cultivated environments—are images from Beaton’s other passion—the arts. Beaton’s life was a vivid tapestry woven from the threads of his artistic passions—interior design, fashion, the theater—each deeply informing his aesthetic vision. His homes, like Ashcombe House and Reddish House, were not just residences but living canvases, where his passion for interior design played out in opulent fabrics, curated antiques, and whimsical details. Gardening offered him a quieter, organic form of creativity, grounding his flair for visual composition in nature’s palette. Together, these disciplines not only shaped Beaton’s art but reflected his belief that beauty could—and should—be orchestrated in every facet of life.
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