Paul Tanqueray: Young in the Twenties
PAST EXHIBITION ARCHIVE
Showcase display
Room 31
8 December 2004 - 15 June 2005
Gertrude Lawrence
by Paul Tanqueray
1932
NPG x19916
Tanqueray first became interested in the theatre and photography when he was at Tonbridge School (1920-1923) and won the school's Photographic prize. Through his contact with an ex-pupil of the school, the fashionable West End studio photographer Hugh Cecil, Tanqueray began his photographic career as one of his pupils.
Paul Tanqueray opened his first studio at 139, High Street, Kensington in 1925. He was then London's youngest photographer and in a perfect position to document an era that had become obsessed with youth and modernism.
Five years of success in Kensington led to a move the more fashionable West End of London at 8, Dover Street, near the Ritz Hotel and just off Piccadilly. Tanqueray's photographs appeared regularly in The Sketch and The Tatler and most frequently inside and on the cover of Theatre World. His work, including his 1929 and 1933 portraits of Anna May Wong, was also selected and hung at the annual London Salon of Photography.
During the Second World War Tanqueray worked mainly with the Chelsea Civil Defence and then re-opened his studio at 30, Thurloe Place in South Kensington where he continued to take photographs until his retirement in 1965. This display also contains several works from the 1950s including his portraits of the actress, dancer and star of the Pajama Game, Elizabeth Seal, the future Lady Olivier, now Dame Joan Plowright, and stage and film actress Claire Bloom.
In 1983 Tanqueray generously donated his negative collection of celebrities to the National Portrait Gallery, which joined 67 prints previously donated in 1975. As well as this display and the photographs on the other side of this case of Anna May Wong, more works can be viewed on the Gallery's website and on the Woodward Portrait Explorer in the IT Gallery.
Pearl Argyle
by Paul Tanqueray
1933
NPG x7241
Tallulah Bankhead
by Paul Tanqueray
1928
NPG x7246
Claire Bloom
by Paul Tanqueray
1956
NPG x7253
Ethel Edith Mannin
by Paul Tanqueray
1930
NPG x14264
Elinor Glyn
by Paul Tanqueray
1931
NPG x16448
John Gielgud; Adele Dixon in 'The Good Companions'
by Paul Tanqueray
1931
NPG x17233
Related portraits
- Tallulah Bankhead (NPG x7246)
- Tallulah Bankhead in 'Her Cardboard Lover' (NPG x7247)
- Anna May Wong (NPG x126211)
- Ethel Edith Mannin (NPG x14264)
- John Gielgud; Adele Dixon in 'The Good Companions' (NPG x17233)
- Elinor Glyn (NPG x16448)
- Gertrude Lawrence (NPG x19916)
- Lady Bridget Poulett (NPG x21799)
- Pearl Argyle (NPG x7241)
- Vivien Leigh (NPG x19993)
- Margot Fonteyn (NPG x14284)
- Claire Bloom (NPG x7253)
- Joan Plowright (NPG x21781)