Cecil Beaton (British, 1904-1980)Illustrations for These Fine Adventurers, or Mission to Mombasa
one inscribed 'THESE FINE ADVENTURERS...' (upper centre); another inscribed 'THE FIGHT WITH THE COBRA' (lower centre)
watercolour and pen and ink
each 19 x 16.3cm (7 1/2 x 6 7/16in).
Executed in 1944
together with several copies of the original manuscript of These Fine Adventurers, or Mission to Mombasa and documents relating to the manuscript and illustrations
(all unframed)
(18)注脚Provenance
Commissioned from the Artist by Donn Casey, and thence by descent

The present works were created when the Artist was a guest of Lord and Lady Casey in Bengal in 1944. Lord Casey had been appointed Governor of Bengal in 1943, and while staying with them Beaton fell ill with dengue fever. Whilst recovering, the Casey's son Donn, who was a teenager at the time, persuaded him to provide illustrations for the story that he had written, Mission to Mombasa, or These Fine Adventurers. As Lady Casey wrote: 'The results were magnificent. Cecil's always brilliant pen was released by his ecstatic and no doubt irritable condition into Donn's uninhibited world. The [eighteen] illustrations swirl with movement and colour. Out of delirium came invention of a high order' (Maie Casey, Tides and Eddies, Penguin, 1966, p.142).