Unveiling Hidden Masterpieces: Rare Prints by Sir Cecil Beaton and Lee Miller Discovered

An extraordinary collection of previously unseen wartime prints by renowned photographers Sir Cecil Beaton and Lee Miller has been unveiled for the first time, offering a fresh glimpse into the past.

The remarkable compilation, known as the ‘Miller-Beaton scrapbook,’ showcases a series of never-before-published images by these iconic 20th-century artists.

Roland Haupt, a former darkroom printer for British Vogue, meticulously assembled this album. He was responsible for developing photographs taken by both Beaton and Miller for the magazine.

This captivating scrapbook, which also features some of Haupt’s own photography, covers the period from 1943 to 1949. It serves as a compelling visual record of the final years of World War II and its aftermath.

Making its public debut, the collection includes some of the earliest prints of Miller’s most famous works.

Among these is an alternative version of the iconic image of Miller in Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s bathtub, taken in his unoccupied Munich apartment in April 1945.

Many of the images were printed by Haupt in Vogue’s London darkroom, with the album a collection of his favourites of those he was asked to process. 

The book, which was passed down to his family after his death in the early sixties, has now been acquired by the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries. 

A new print of Miller in Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s bathtub in his vacant Munich apartment in April 1945, top right, and Miller with painter Pablo Picasso in his Paris studio, bottom left

Shots from Miller’s wartime photography, which she captioned, clockwise from top left: ‘Hitler’s sitting room, Eva Braun’s house, Eva Braun’s bed with [illegible] reading Mein Kampf, Eagle’s Nest in flames’

Buchenwald concentration camp, which was established in 1937 and liberated in April 1945  

Photography dealer Michael Hoppen obtained it directly from his relatives, bringing this astonishing wartime record into a public collection for the first time.  

Haupt wrote in the book: ‘This is the story of my favourite photographer Lee Miller – Vogue war correspondent – she followed the American army from the beaches of Normandy, five days after D-Day, up to the final entry into Berlin and after that she continued her journey visiting countries that had been occupied, having many exciting experiences – these are a few of the beautiful pictures she sent back.’ 

Miller started out as a fashion model in her native New York in the 1920s, before moving to Paris, where she became a fashion and fine art photographer. 

She was living in London when the Blitz began in 1940, which kickstarted her career as a photojournalist – and she soon became the official war photographer at Vogue.  

At the start of her time at the magazine, Miller printed her own photographs in the darkroom – but in 1940, she trained her Haupt, her assistant, to take over.

It left her free to work as one of the few accredited female war correspondents, embedded in the US Army, with her images published in British and American Vogue.

His newly uncovered album contains several pivotal moments from her war photography career, including further shots of Hitler’s Munich home.

The infamous bathtub shot, taken by fellow photographer David E Scherman, was Miller ‘sticking two fingers up at Hitler’, according to her son Antony Penrose. 

She had trodden all over his bathroom floor with her boots ‘covered with the filth of Dachau’, he said – the concentration camp she had just visited to photograph. 

Other images show American troops destroying his Alpine retreat in Berchtesgaden, known as the Eagle’s Nest, and German soldiers surrendering to the US Army. 

The late Queen, when she was still Princess Elizabeth, with her sister Princess Margaret, both bottom right 

Wallis Simpson, pictured right, the Duchess of Windsor and wife of Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor, whose marriage to the divorcee saw him forced to abdicate

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor on their wedding day, bottom left 

Pictures taken on the set of the 1945 British film, The Seventh Veil

Portrait of British playwright Noel Coward, bottom right 

British actress Vivien Leigh 

Welsh actor Ivor Novello, bottom left, and Sarah Churchill, Baroness Audley, bottom right, the second daughter of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill 

Two captured and beaten-up SS Nazi paramilitary officers 

Beaton pictured in Cairo, top left, New Delhi, bottom left, and Libya, right 

Victory over Japan, or VJ, Day in London in August 1945, when Japan surrendered, effectively bringing the Second World War to an end 

The surrender of the German army to US soldiers 

She also captured the liberation of Dachau and another camp at Buchenwald, as well an arresting picture of two captured and beaten SS Nazi paramilitary officers.

Her varied artistic milieu can also be seen in a snap of Miller, in her army uniform, talking to painter Pablo Picasso. 

Miller’s incredible legacy has only been fully recognised in recent years, which have seen a solo exhibition at Tate Britain and a biopic film starring Kate Winslet. 

Haupt also worked as an assistant to Beaton, who worked for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar alongside Miller in the same period. 

The British photographer was stationed in North Africa during the 1940s, where the Allies staged and eventually won a campaign. 

The newly discovered scrapbook contains photos of his showing the surreal, stark beauty of the desert, as well as the physical extremes endured by troops. 

Alongside the pictures of the Saharan frontier, there are also several shots he took in London, of subjects ranging from theatre sets to newspaper cuttings. 

The album also contains remarkable portraits of many of the era’s most recognisable cultural figures. 

German actress Marlene Dietrich, American dancer Fred Astaire and British playwright Noel Coward are all among their number. 

Richard Ovenden, head of the Bodleian Library, and Helen Hamlyn, director of Oxford University Libraries, said: ‘The acquisition by the Bodleian marks an important step in preserving this unique album for scholarship and in enriching our understanding of the role of photography in documenting the Second World War. 

‘Much research remains to be undertaken on the album, which is a highly unusual record of the relationship between a darkroom technician and two great photographers.’ 

Now part of the Bodleian’s permanent collection, the book will undergo conservation and cataloging before being made available to researchers. 

The library said it also ‘plans to explore opportunities for public display and wider access’.