--- title: Cecil Beaton's Portrait of 3-Year-Old Eileen Dunne, the Blitz, 1940 description: One photograph, made during the London Blitz, cemented Cecil Beaton’s reputation as a man capable of chronicling terror as well as beauty. canonical: https://time.com/3878665/cecil-beaton-portrait-of-eileen-dunne-1940-london-blitz/ author: Liz Ronk article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-01-13T20:36:33.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:03:47.641Z og:title: Cecil Beaton's Portrait of 3-Year-Old Eileen Dunne, the Blitz, 1940 og:description: One photograph, made during the London Blitz, cemented Cecil Beaton’s reputation as a man capable of chronicling terror as well as beauty. og:url: https://time.com/3878665/cecil-beaton-portrait-of-eileen-dunne-1940-london-blitz/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt42bb74274beb311b/69884b0da988ca0a146b202d/140108-cecil-beaton-wwii-1940-blitz.jpg?branch=production&width=1920&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Eileen Dunne, Blitz Victim, 1940 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Cecil Beaton's Portrait of 3-Year-Old Eileen Dunne, the Blitz, 1940 twitter:description: One photograph, made during the London Blitz, cemented Cecil Beaton’s reputation as a man capable of chronicling terror as well as beauty. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt42bb74274beb311b/69884b0da988ca0a146b202d/140108-cecil-beaton-wwii-1940-blitz.jpg?branch=production&width=1920&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Cecil Beaton's War Child: Portrait of a Young Victim of the Blitz by [Liz Ronk](https://time.com/author/liz-ronk/) ## Liz Ronk Jan 13, 2014 8:36 PM UTC  Three-year-old Eileen Dunne, a victim of the London Blitz, in hospital, 1940. Three-year-old Eileen Dunne, a victim of the London Blitz, in hospital, 1940.Cecil Beaton/ Camera Press/ Redux by [Liz Ronk](https://time.com/author/liz-ronk/) ## Liz Ronk Jan 13, 2014 8:36 PM UTC Sir Cecil Beaton (Jan. 14, 1904 – Jan. 18, 1980), knighted in 1972, was a 20th-century Renaissance man. In his lifetime, he won four Tony Awards and three Oscars for costume design and art direction. He was a major force in ballet and the opera, and a master photographic portraitists of England’s royals. But equally powerful, if much less known, were his photos from World War II, made when he covered the conflict in England and abroad for Winston Churchill’s Ministry of Information. One photograph, in particular, cemented Beaton’s reputation as a man capable of chronicling terror as well as beauty. Well over a year before the U.S. entered the war, and as Britain was the lone holdout in Europe against the Third Reich’s juggernaut, a Beaton picture of a young girl named Eileen Dunne graced the cover of LIFE magazine. This deeply sympathetic photograph was as powerful a piece of visual propaganda as any made during those years, and commanded Americans to take a keener interest in a war that, at that stage, still felt very far away. The delicate touch that Beaton applied to his most graceful royal portraits is clearly at work here, as well, in this portrait of an innocent victim of the Blitz. But perhaps LIFE described the picture best, in its Sept. 23, 1940, issue: --- > “” --- “England’s crack society photographer,” as LIFE described Beaton, would go on to photograph five more LIFE covers in the 1940s and ‘50s, mostly of the royal variety, and his work would appear in the magazine’s pages scores of times through the years. --- _Liz Ronk is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her_ [_@LizabethRonk_](https://twitter.com/LizabethRonk)_._  Expatriate men have been targeted by female thieves in bars in the Wan Chai district of Hong Kong LIFE Magazine  Three-year-old Eileen Dunne, a victim of the London Blitz, in hospital, 1940. Cecil Beaton/ Camera Press/ Redux  LIFE magazine, September 23, 1940 LIFE Magazine ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3878665/cecil-beaton-portrait-of-eileen-dunne-1940-london-blitz/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3878665/cecil-beaton-portrait-of-eileen-dunne-1940-london-blitz/"},"headline":"Cecil Beaton's War Child: Portrait of a Young Victim of the Blitz","datePublished":"2014-01-13T20:36:33.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:03:47.641Z","description":"LIFE considers the photo that cemented Cecil Beaton’s reputation as a photographer capable of chronicling terror as well as beauty.","url":"https://time.com/3878665/cecil-beaton-portrait-of-eileen-dunne-1940-london-blitz/","keywords":["photography","World War II","Liz Ronk"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt42bb74274beb311b/69884b0da988ca0a146b202d/140108-cecil-beaton-wwii-1940-blitz.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Liz Ronk","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/liz-ronk/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt42bb74274beb311b/69884b0da988ca0a146b202d/140108-cecil-beaton-wwii-1940-blitz.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Eileen Dunne, Blitz Victim, 1940","caption":"Three-year-old Eileen Dunne, a victim of the London Blitz, in hospital, 1940.","creditText":"Cecil Beaton/ Camera Press/ Redux","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3878665/cecil-beaton-portrait-of-eileen-dunne-1940-london-blitz/","name":"Cecil Beaton's War Child: Portrait of a Young Victim of the Blitz"}}]}] ```