Patrick Lichfield

Boy Wearing a Palestinian Keffiyeh

1960

Patrick Lichfield (1939-2005) Officially Thomas Patrick John Anson, 5th Earl of Lichfield Guard and Tortoise, c. 1960 Gelatin silver print 38.2 x 26.5 cm. Provenance: Patrick Lichfield, who gifted to Hugh Myddelton Biddulph (1995-2021); Passed to Gaia Servadio (1938-2021); By descent to Orlando Mostyn-Owen (b. 1973); Private Collection, United Kingdom. A young man crouches on a rocky outcrop, approached by a small tortoise. He wears an archetypal service uniform, his jacket cuffs with bands of gold braiding, and polished brass buttons. His banded cap is of a sort later appropriated from the military for use in private service, and his loose socks and mud-spattered brogues remind of British schoolboys. A distant arched structure can be seen beyond, perhaps a small bridge over water. The photograph was taken by Lichfield on a visit to the Empty Quarter with his lifelong friend Hugh Myddelton Biddulph, of Chirk Castle, Wales. The visit was one of Lichfield’s earliest to the Middle East, which he would revisit throughout his career. The pair travelled through the region on a Mini Moke, carrying basic supplies and sleeping in a teepee. The photograph was left after Myddelton’s death to his second wife Gaia Servadio, the eccentric Italian journalist, writer, and first mother-in-law to Boris Johnson. After her death in 2021, it passed to her artist son Orlando Mostyn-Owen, and later into a private British collection. Patrick Lichfield was born in 1939, the son of Thomas Anson, Viscount Anson, and Anne Bowes-Lyon, later Princess Anne of Denmark. After seven years in the Grenadier Guards, Lichfield began his career as a photographer’s assistant in 1962 to Kasterine and Michael Wallis, after which he earned a five-year contract with American Vogue. He benefited greatly from his access to the royal family, since Queen Elizabeth was his maternal first cousin. In 1981 he took the official photograph for the wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Although best known for his portraits of the royal family, Lichfield’s celebrity portraits included Yves Saint Laurent, Jane Birkin, Cecil Beaton, David Hockney, Kate Bush, Ian McKellen, Joan Collins, Joanna Lumley...

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