Paula Gellibrand, Marquise de Casa Maury

© Cecil Beaton Archive / Condé Nast

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Paula Gellibrand, Marquise de Casa Maury

by Cecil Beaton
bromide print, 1928
5 3/8 in. x 3 1/4 in. (137 mm x 81 mm)
Accepted in lieu of tax by H.M. Government and allocated to the Gallery, 1991
Photographs Collection
NPG x40044

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  • Cecil Beaton (1904-1980), Photographer, designer and writer. Artist or producer associated with 1114 portraits, Sitter associated with 360 portraits.

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  • Pepper, Terence, Beaton Portraits, 2004 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 5 February - 31 May 2004), p. 43 Read entry

    The 25-year-old Beaton described his feminine ideal in an interview to the New York Evening Sun in 1929: she should be a ‘ripping, ravishing Venus’, who should have ‘a very long, thin, almost scrawny neck, no chin at all, an abbreviated nose, three cherries for a mouth and big pansy eyes and a general bird-like appearance and heaps of paint, especially around the eyes’. Beaton’s ideal was best personified by Paula Gellibrand, the exotic-looking wife of the Marquis de Casa Maury, depicted here in a shimmering, silver-sequinned dress against matching sequinned curtains from her modernist London home.

  • Pepper, Terence, Beaton Portraits, 2004 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 5 February to 31 May 2004), p. 43

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Current affairs

The Representation of the People Act 1928 grants women the same rights to vote as men. Building on reform of 1918, this Act lowered the voting age for women from 30 to 21, and removed the ownership of property requirements.

Art and science

Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin. The Scottish scientist's identification of the first antibiotic revolutionised the treatment of infection and is a landmark in medical history. By the Second World War, penicillin was being used to treat wounded soldiers and had a major impact on survival rates of those with infected wounds.

International

Stalin announces the Soviet Union's first Five-Year plan of economic development. Based on Lenin's New Economic Policy, the Five-Year Plans aimed to expand the country's economy through rapid centralised industrialisation.

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Jonathan Hope

18 January 2019, 21:37

Paula Gellibrand came into my life when I was 9 or 10 years old and my family lived near her Nettlebed home in the neighbouring village of Rotherfield Greys. Paula became a part of our lives and spent a lot of time with my brother and I , taking us for long walks and teaching us card games, always interested in what we had been doing and reading or introducing us to writers like John Whyndham. She was was delightful. That would have been during the 1960s and we remained in touch until the end of her life. She rarely talked about the past but I remember her descriptions of life in Kenya with Boy Long who is mentioned in Out of Africa incidentally. She remembered him shooting dead a black mamba as it climbed up the bed post in the small hours and how impressed she had been!
I am interested to learn of her first marriage of which she never spoke.
Paula Long as I will always remember her was a life enhancing presence. She always spoke her mind and was remarkably unaffected for a former style ikon and famous beauty. She could be terrific fun and an understanding friend.

Simon Packard

17 September 2018, 20:59

Paula Gellibrand has three Grandchildren Susan Brooks (Born 1944), Nicholas (1947) and Gregory (1950).

Simon Packard. Ivan was my Grandmother's brother

31 July 2018, 10:27

John Peter Gellibrand Brooks born 10.12.1914, David Charles Brooks born 06.09.1917-25.08.1997.
Ivan Wilkie Brooks was born 28.09.1891.

caroline ferguson

07 February 2017, 15:41

Paula's 1st husband was not Casa Maury, but artist Ivan Wilkie Brooks(1892-1952) with whom she had a son called Peter in 1915. Paula and Ivan were married in france which is why it is little known.