The Earl Of Lichfield; Independent obituary (GREAT)
Hyfler/Rosner
The Earl Of Lichfield
Photographer who rose above his royal connections to make
some of the defining images of his time
12 November 2005
As a photographer, Patrick Lichfield created some of the
defining images of the Sixties and Seventies: Marsha Hunt in
the nude; the star of Hair with the original big hair; Mick
Jagger with his highly plastic mouth; Joanna Lumley; Jane
Birkin - and his iconic Swinging London group portrait with
Roman Polanski, David Hockney and Lady Antonia Fraser. Later
in his career he became known better for his portraits of
his own relations in the Royal Family - especially his
wedding photographs of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana
Spencer in 1981.
Lichfield was born to be a society photographer but lucky to
come into his own at a time when the boundaries of "Society"
were being stretched to include film and pop stars. Though
he was the exact opposite of most of the working-class
snappers who themselves became celebrities in that era, the
fifth Earl of Lichfield had plenty in common with the first
Earl of Snowdon, who, Lichfield insisted in his 1986
autobiography Not the Whole Truth, was "a photographer who
became a Lord", and not, as he himself was, "a Lord who
became a photographer".
Actually, Patrick Lichfield had a wry sense of humour,
especially about himself. He could see, and relished, a
touch of absurdity about his own position - particularly
when he appeared in front of the camera as a model in
advertisements for Burberry's.
Lichfield was born in 1939, the son of Thomas, Viscount
Anson, heir to the fourth Earl of Lichfield, and Princess
Anne of Denmark (née Anne Bowes-Lyon), the Queen Mother's
niece. He was therefore a first cousin once removed of the
Queen. He and his younger sister, now known as Lady
Elizabeth Anson, the party organiser, were shunted back and
forth between their grandparents' stately homes, accompanied
by their nanny, Agnes Maxim. At Shugborough Hall in
Staffordshire his paternal grandfather encouraged him to
understudy the servants - Lichfield later referred to this
odd practice as his lessons in "life and man management".
His interest in photography stemmed from this time, when he
was given a Vest Pocket Camera and began taking photographs
of animals around the estate. Two years later the young
Patrick Anson was rumbled taking illicit snapshots with his
grandfather's Box Brownie: when the film was developed, a
photograph of a housemaid in her bedroom - shot through a
window from a fire escape - was revealed. "That was my first
nude," Lichfield confessed.
At Harrow, as well as being a gifted sportsman, he realised
he had a talent for capturing the character of his friends
in photographic "leavers' " portraits, for which he charged
9d per shot taken with his Kodak Retinette.
He joined the Grenadier Guards in 1959 (he said he had been
drunk when he did so), but left after a year when his
grandfather died and he inherited the earldom and the
10,000-acre 18th-century Shugborough estate. (His father had
died two years earlier, of an allergic reaction to a bee
sting.) Lichfield was subsequently forced, because of large
death duties, into passing Shugborough and most of its
contents to the National Trust, retaining a small portion of
the house for his private use.
Lichfield now embarked on a career as a professional
photographer. According to him, his family thought his
photographic career, when he initially worked as a darkroom
technician for Dmitri Kasterine and Michael Wallis, "far
worse than being an interior decorator and only marginally
better than hairdressing".
Throughout his life Patrick Lichfield, as he preferred to
style himself, objected to the way the press painted him as
"a renegade royal who swapped his coronet for a camera". A
favourite of the gossip columns, his name was frequently
linked with the rich and glamorous, and his playboy life
style commented on. The real story, Lichfield claimed, was
less romantic and not without unhappiness. In 1969 he told
the Daily Sketch, "I have really worked at being a
photographer. I've used pseudonyms to make sure that it is
my work and not my name that counts."
Lichfield's photographic career embraced fashion, glamour,
commercial photography and portraits. Famous sitters ranged
from Sophia Loren, Britt Ekland and Debbie Harry to Harold
Macmillan, and his work from sensitively shot nudes for the
Unipart Calendar to formal royal commissions such as
Princess Anne's engagement photographs and the Queen's
silver wedding portraits.
As is the case for most photographers, the bread and butter
of his profession remained commercial work throughout his
career, which he did from a studio in Notting Hill, west
London, where he once employed a staff of five. Early
photographic subjects consisted mainly of debutantes he met
on the social circuit, portraits of whom he sold to glossy
magazines like Queen and the social pages of the tabloids.
His first significant break into serious photography came
when Diana Vreeland, the celebrated (and helpfully snobbish)
editor of American Vogue, commissioned Lichfield to take
some portraits of the Duke of Windsor in his Paris home.
Lichfield's shots of him tying a Windsor knot were the first
of many assignments from the Vogue titles in Britain and the
United States. Lichfield was pleased to have become part of
the Brit pack of photographers working in New York, which
included Tony Snowdon, Cecil Beaton, David Bailey and Norman
Parkinson. Further proof of his acceptance as a professional
came when the Royal Photographic Society staged a one-man
retrospective in 1974.
He secured his first royal commission after approaching the
Buckingham Palace press office with the suggestion of
shooting group photographs of the Queen and her family on
holiday. He capitalised on the newly prevailing spirit of
informality - started by the television cameras' being
allowed into Westminster Abbey for the Coronation in 1953,
and developed further by Richard Cawston's 1968 television
film, Royal Family, which, by showing the Windsors as
hard-working individuals, altered the public's perception of
them for ever.
Lichfield's successful execution of informal portraits
helped humanise the royals. He depicted a relaxed and
smiling family on holiday - dressed casually in kilts in
front of Balmoral, with the corgis playing by their feet:
fishing, having barbecues, riding and walking. More royal
commissions followed, which he states in his autobiography
were "among the hardest and most rewarding pictures I have
taken". He outmanoeuvred press photographers at the wedding
of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1981 by clicking his
tongue, successfully emulating the sound of a camera shutter
closing, prompting his rivals to use up their own quota of
exposures believing he had done the same, thus leaving
Lichfield to capture the famous shot of the bridal group
collapsing in a heap of giggles after the formal shoot was
over.
Patrick Lichfield's trademark grey bouffant hair-do and
beautifully tailored clothes, with a crisp white
handkerchief protruding from his breast pocket, never
changed. Following his stint as a Burberry's model with
Annunziata Asquith, he became synonymous with British style
and elegance, making him the perfect model to market his own
ready-to-wear range of clothes - "the Lichfield line" -
which he developed in the US in the Sixties.
As an arbiter of beauty and glamour, he put together several
photographic books including The Most Beautiful Women
(1981), Lichfield on Photography (1981) and Lichfield on
Travel Photography (1986). Queen Mother: the Lichfield
selection (1990) and Elizabeth R: the Lichfield selection
(1991) followed. In 2003 the National Portrait Gallery
staged an exhibition, "Lichfield: the early years
1962-1982", celebrating the 40th anniversary of his starting
out as a professional photographer.
A bon vivant, Lichfield was director of several restaurants
in London including the casual Deals restaurants which he
ran with Eddie Lim and David Linley. It must have been in
connection with this aspect of his career that six of us -
Jilly Cooper and Sue Arnold were of the party - once had
lunch in the private room called the Orangery at Claridges,
when a doddering and ancient waiter used the salt rather
than the sugar caster to prepare our ostentatiously flambéed
pudding course. All six struggled to keep a straight face
and pretend that we had already eaten more than we could
manage, while Patrick Lichfield instantly told a pre-emptive
joke that allowed us to collapse in laughter but spare the
old waiter's feelings.
Latterly he tried to change his anyway undeserved dilettante
image and highlight a compassionate side to his public
persona. In 1989 he took on a role as the VSO's first
ambassador, visiting volunteers worldwide.
A devoted father to his three children, Patrick Lichfield
admitted to feeling devastated when his marriage to Leonora
Grosvenor, sister of the Duke of Westminster, whom he wed to
great fanfare in 1975, ended in divorce 11 years later. The
amount of travel that Lichfield undertook during
assignments, spending on average 200 nights a year in
hotels, had presumably contributed to the break-up. The
constant stream of tabloid stories "documenting" his alleged
affairs with models throughout the Seventies and Eighties
did not help.
On the breakdown of his marriage, Noel Myers, Unipart's art
director who had worked with Lichfield on the famous
calendars, suggested in an interview that Lichfield was
driven to being a workaholic because he was determined to
prove he was not the beneficiary of privilege.
Lichfield wished his legacy to be the arboretum he planted
at Shugborough in 1976, and was proud that he knew the Latin
name for each of the 52 varieties of oak that grow in the
park. It was, however, his million or so negatives that will
be the more apt reminder of a man who acknowledged, "I am
happier taking photos than doing anything else in life."
Alexandra Younger and Paul Levy
It was the Sixties and London was swinging, writes Karl
Dallas, when the Queen's cousin was thrown together with a
jumped-up working-class commie, namely myself, who had had
the cheek to criticise the dress sense of his relative the
Prince of Wales in Tailor & Cutter magazine.
After Woodstock, I attempted to get a British festival
organised along similar lines, and Patrick Lichfield was
instrumental in getting together half a dozen of the richest
young men in the country to raise the millions of dosh we
needed to get it off the ground. Alas, the debacle of the
Rolling Stones concert followed shortly afterwards, and the
money men withdrew from the project.
For a time I represented Patrick's clothing-design ideas in
the United States, though I never found a clothing company
willing adequately to pay for the Lichfield name. One time,
when I was fashion consultant to Bob Guccione's short-lived
Lords magazine, the actor I had booked for a shoot failed to
turn up, and in a panic I rang Patrick for help. He left his
own studio session and roared up on his motorbike to fill
in.
He helped me to set up the International Male Elegance
Awards and sat on the judging committee, where he caused
some dissension by insisting on voting for himself as the
best-dressed royal.
Patrick often said that, if his studio caught fire, he'd
prioritise saving his Levi jeans rather than his precious
negs. Frankly, I never believed him, but it made a good
media quote.
Thomas Patrick John Anson, photographer: born 25 April 1939;
succeeded 1960 as fifth Earl of Lichfield; married 1975 Lady
Leonora Grosvenor (one son, two daughters; marriage
dissolved 1986); died Oxford 11 November 2005.