The Royal Collection Trust’s summer exhibition at Buckingham Palace brings together some of the most wonderful royal portraits ever taken. Jack Watkins takes a look.

British monarchs once used portraiture to fashion their public image.

Now, an exhibition in The King’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace shows how, for the past 100 years, photography has been the preferred tool for shaping perceptions of the Royal Family. ‘Royal Portraits: A Century of Photography’ runs from May 17 to October 6.

Starting in the glamour-conscious interwar decades, pioneering female photographers, such as Dorothy Wilding (the first female photographer to receive a Royal Warrant) and Yevonde (also known as Madame Yevonde), produced royal portraits.

Snowdon, Princess Margaret, 1967. Credit: Photograph: Snowdon / Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2024

Dorothy Wilding’s Queen Elizabeth II, 1952. Credit: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2024

The key figure, however, from 1930 almost up to his death in 1980, was Cecil Beaton. Instrumental in repairing the image of the Crown after the abdication crisis, as Sir Roy Strong once wrote, his photos restored the idea of it as something ‘mysterious and heroic’.

Cecil Beaton’s Princess Margaret, 1949. Credit: Cecil Beaton / Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2024

Although Beaton’s coronation portraits of Elizabeth II are a centrepiece, later photographs by the late Lord Snowdon of the Queen and her young family, as well as of his future wife, Princess Margaret, together with those by David Bailey and Annie Leibovitz, present a more modern and less detached picture of the royals in often less formal settings.

The photograph by Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, of TRH Prince Charles and Princess Anne, 1956. Credits: Photograph: Antony Armstrong-Jones / Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2024

The exhibition features about 150 vintage photographic prints from the Royal Collection and the Royal Archives, most of which have never previously been publicly displayed.

Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, Proof with handwritten instructions, 1958. Credits: Photograph: Antony Armstrong-Jones / Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2024

Curator Alessandro Nasini said he hoped visitors would ‘enjoy a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the creative process’ behind the images.