The Marlboroughs
Slim Aarons · 1957
From € 250.00 Including VAT
About this work
The Marlboroughs, Blenheim Palace 1957
On a bench at the edge of a broad lawn sit a man and a woman, each busy with something. He reads the newspaper with a cigar in his mouth, in a checked short-sleeved shirt. She works in a blue dress and pearl necklace on a piece of embroidery on a stand. Behind them stands a palace of warm sandstone with towers and pinnacles, under a pale sky.
John Albert Edward Spencer Churchill, the 10th Duke of Marlborough, and his wife Mary relaxed in 1957 on a bench in the grounds of Blenheim Palace, the family seat in Oxfordshire. The palace fills the whole width of the frame, while the couple sit small beneath the branches in the shade. Yet they are the subject: two people with their backs to the house, simply reading the paper and doing embroidery.
- Photographer
- Slim Aarons
- Collection
- Slim Aarons
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Year
- 1957
- Reference
- 3165488
The photographer
Photographing attractive people who were doing attractive things in attractive places.
George Allen Aarons, born in New York, served as a military photographer in World War II and subsequently transitioned to print journalism. Whereas he previously documented the war, he deliberately chose the opposite subject: the leisure time of the rich and famous, in breathtaking settings.
His most famous photograph, The Kings of Hollywood (1957), encapsulates what he sought in all his portraits: glamour, charisma, and celebrity, captured in a relaxed manner.
Aarons won the trust of the people he photographed, thereby gaining access to some of the most intimate and candid portraits of the twentieth century. In 2007, Getty Images published the book Poolside With Slim Aarons , crowning his legacy.
- Born October 29, 1916 , New York
- Died May 29, 2006 , Montrose, NY
- Hulton Archive / Getty Images
