Norman Parkinson - Lifework [antikvár]

CHRONOLOGY ABOVE The author aged six. Photograph by a Putney High Street studio photographer BELOW Photographing model Pamela Minchin in his Dover Street studio, 1935. Photograph by Nancy Sandys-Walicer, his secretary 1913 Ronald William Parkinson Smith born on 21 April in Roehampton, the second of three children to William James Parkinson Smith, a barrister, and Louie (née Cobley) who was half-Italian and a direct descendant of Luigi Lablache, the famous basso profundo and music teacher to Queen Victoria. Evacuated to countryside during the war and spent later childhood in Putney, London. 1927-31 Educated at Westminster School where his strongest subject was art. Encouraged by school art master, H.S. Williamson, who was well known as a painter and a poster artist. Won Henry Luce school art prize. Awarded his pink (colours) for rowing. 1931—3 Apprenticed to a firm of Court photographers, Speaight & Son of Bond Street, run by Richard Neville Speaight whose autobiography, Memoirs of a Court Photographer, had been published in 1926. Though somewhat past its heyday, this well-established firm still attracted a cross-section of members of the upper reaches of British Society and minor European royalty. In 1931 Speaights were honoured to take the first official photographs of the second daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York, Princess Margaret Rose. Parkinson focussed the cumbersome studio camera for Richard Speaight to operate through the cable pressure release, and assisted Mr Smart in the darkroom. 1934 After two years of his three-year apprenticeship, Ronald Parkinson with Norman Kibblewhite, another ex-pupil of Speaight's, set up the Norman Parkinson portrait studio at 1, Dover Street, off Piccadilly and near the Ritz. At first the studio specialized in portraits, staying open until 2 am on court nights to photograph a succession of debutantes and their mothers. 1935 15-23 October. First one-man exhibition, opened by the American-born Duchess of Leinster, included portraits of Noël Coward, Vivien Leigh and the Paget twins. Recruited by P. Joyce Reynolds, Editor of British Harper's Bazaar, to take editorial photographs each month for the magazine, working on location and out of doors. Close collaboration with Alan Y. McPeake, the Art Editor whose creative layouts emphasized Parkinson's avowed aim of 'taking moving pictures with a still