Norman Parkinson
Took fashion photography outdoors and kept it there for fifty years, usually with a joke in it.
Norman Parkinson was born Ronald William Parkinson Smith in London in 1913 and opened his own studio at twenty-one. He is credited with moving British fashion photography out of the studio and into the street and the landscape, shooting for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue and Queen with a lightness that was new and a willingness to look faintly absurd that was newer. He photographed the Royal Family repeatedly, worked in Tobago in later life, and cultivated the moustache, the Kashmiri wedding hat and the persona to match. He was made a CBE and died in 1990.
The estate, through the Norman Parkinson Archive, controls printing and is the reference for what a given print is, which matters because the great majority of what circulates is posthumous: modern editioned prints from the archive, in stated sizes and edition numbers, with accompanying certification. Lifetime prints exist and are a separate and much smaller category. Colour work from the 1950s onwards is significant and dye-transfer and later pigment prints behave quite differently. Verso stamps, edition numbers and the archive's paperwork are what identify a print.
If you own a work by Norman Parkinson
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.