Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon

British photographer and filmmaker (1930–2017)

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Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon (7 March 1930 – 13 January 2017), was a British photographer. He was best known internationally for his portraits of prominent cultural and political figures, many of which were published in Vogue, Vanity Fair, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Sunday Telegraph Magazine, and other major outlets. More than 280 of his photographs are held in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery. Between 1968 and 1973, he directed several television documentaries and contributed to design and accessibility reforms. A committed advocate for disabled people, he helped shape policy and infrastructure across the United Kingdom. He married Princess Margaret, sister of Queen Elizabeth II, in 1960; he was created Earl of Snowdon the following year, and they divorced in 1978.

Early life

Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones was born on 7 March 1930 at Eaton Terrace in Belgravia, central London, the second child and only son of the Welsh barrister Ronald Armstrong-Jones (1899–1966) and his first wife, Anne Messel (later Countess of Rosse; 1902–1992). He was called "Tony" by his close relatives.

Armstrong-Jones's paternal grandfather was Sir Robert Armstrong-Jones, a Welsh psychiatrist. His paternal grandmother, Lady Armstrong-Jones (née Margaret Roberts), was one of the first 12 students at Somerville Hall (later Somerville College) in Oxford and was the daughter of the Welsh educationalist Sir Owen Roberts. Armstrong-Jones's mother's family was of German-Jewish descent. A maternal uncle was the stage designer Oliver Messel (1904–1978); a maternal great-grandfather was the Punch cartoonist Linley Sambourne (1844–1910); and his great-great-uncle Alfred Messel was a Berlin architect. Additionally, his great-great-grandmother, Frances Linley, was a first cousin of Elizabeth Linley, wife of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

Armstrong-Jones's parents divorced in early 1935, before his fifth birthday. His mother remarried later that year and had two more children.

As a 16-year-old he contracted polio while on holiday in Wales; during the six months that he was in the Liverpool Royal Infirmary recuperating, the only visitor from his family was his sister Susan. The illness left him with a withered left leg, one inch shorter than the other, and a slight permanent limp.

Education

Armstrong-Jones was educated at two private boarding schools: first at Sandroyd School in Surrey from the autumn term of 1938, then, a year later, at Sandroyd's new site in Wiltshire up to 1943. After Sandroyd he attended Eton College, beginning in the autumn term ("Michaelmas half") of 1943. In March 1945, he qualified in the "extra special weight" class of the School Boxing Finals. He continued to box in 1946, gaining at least two flattering mentions in the Eton College Chronicle. In 1947, he was a coxswain in Eton's traditional "Fourth of June" Daylight Procession of Boats.

He then matriculated at the University of Cambridge, where he studied architecture at Jesus College, but failed his second-year exams. He coxed the winning Cambridge boat in the 1950 Boat Race.

Career

After university, Armstrong-Jones began a career as a photographer in fashion, design and theatre. His stepmother had a friend who knew Baron the photographer; Baron visited Armstrong-Jones in his London flat, which doubled as his work studio. Baron, impressed, agreed to bring on Armstrong-Jones as an apprentice, first on a fee-paying basis but eventually, as his talent and skills became apparent to Baron, as a salaried associate.

Much of his early commissions were theatrical portraits, often with recommendations from his uncle Oliver Messel, and "society" portraits highly favoured in Tatler, which, in addition to buying many of his photographs, gave him byline credit for the captions. He later became known for his royal studies, among which were the official portraits of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh during their 1957 tour of Canada. He was also an early contributor to Queen magazine, the magazine owned by his friend Jocelyn Stevens.

After marrying Princess Margaret in May 1960, Armstrong-Jones's first solo public engagement was on 7 December 1960, when he presented the 1960 National Challenge Trophies for the trade organisation the Photographic Information Council's School Photography competition, with entries from 200 schools in Britain with camera clubs, at the opening of an exhibition of the work. News of this event was covered in American and Australian newspapers, as well as in England.

In line with the usual royal practice when a king's daughter married a commoner, in October 1961 Armstrong-Jones was granted a peerage, becoming Earl of Snowdon, or Lord Snowdon.

In the early 1960s, Snowdon became the artistic adviser of The Sunday Times Magazine, and by the 1970s had established himself as one of Britain's most respected photographers. Though his work included everything from fashion photography to documentary images of inner-city life and the mentally ill, he is best known for his portraits of world notables, many of them published in Vogue, Vanity Fair, The Sunday Times Magazine, and The Sunday Telegraph Magazine. His subjects included Marlene Dietrich, Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Leslie Caron, Lynn Fontanne, David Bowie, Elizabeth Taylor, Rupert Everett, Anthony Blunt, David Hockney, Princess Grace of Monaco, Diana, Princess of Wales, Barbara Cartland, Raine Spencer (when she was Lady Lewisham), Desmond Guinness, British prime minister Harold Macmillan, Iris Murdoch, Tom Stoppard, Vladimir Nabokov, and J. R. R. Tolkien. More than 280 of his photographs are in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery.

In 1968, he made his first documentary film, Don't Count the Candles, for the US television network CBS, on the subject of aging. It won seven awards, including two Emmys. This was followed by Love of a Kind (1969), about the British and animals, Born to Be Small (1971) about people of restricted growth and Happy Being Happy (1973).

In October 1981, a group portrait by Snowdon of the British rock band Queen was used on the cover of their Greatest Hits album. A Snowdon portrait of Freddie Mercury was used in 2000 on the cover of Mercury's compilation box set The Solo Collection.

In 2000, Snowdon was given a retrospective exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Photographs by Snowdon: A Retrospective, which travelled to the Yale Center for British Art the following year. More than 180 of his photographs were displayed in an exhibition that honoured what the museums called "a rounded career with sharp edges".

Snowdon was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society—he was awarded the Hood Medal of the Society in 1978 and the Progress Medal in 1985.

In 2006, Tomas Maier, creative director of the Italian fashion brand Bottega Veneta, brought in Snowdon to photograph his Autumn/Winter 2006 campaign.

Designs and inventions

Snowdon co-designed (in 1963, with Frank Newby and Cedric Price) the "Snowdon Aviary" of the London Zoo (which opened in 1964); he later said it was one of his creations of which he was most proud, and affectionately called it the "birdcage". He also had a major role in designing the physical arrangements for the 1969 investiture of his nephew Prince Charles as Prince of Wales.

He was granted a patent for a type of electric wheelchair in 1971.

Philanthropy and charity

Disabled persons

Contracting polio as a teenager left Snowdon with a shortened leg and a limp. As a result, in adulthood, he was a fierce and tireless campaigner for disabled people, and over several decades achieved dozens of groundbreaking political, economic, structural, transportation, and educational reforms for persons with any type of disability.

In the 1960s, he served as a council member of the Polio Research Fund, later renamed the National Fund for Research into Crippling Diseases. He served as a trustee of the National Fund for Research into Crippling Diseases, since renamed Action Medical Research.

In June 1980, Snowdon started an award scheme for disabled students. This scheme, administered by the Snowdon Trust, provides grants and scholarships for students with disabilities.

He was president for England of the International Year of Disabled Persons in 1981.

In 1981, he formed the Snowdon Council; it consisted of 12 members who coordinated a dozen different bodies concerned with helping disabled people.

The arts

During his first marriage, Snowdon was patron of the National Youth Theatre, the Contemporary Art Society for Wales, the Welsh Theatre Company, and the Civic Trust for Wales. He was also President of the British Theatre Museum.

He was provost of the Royal College of Art from 1995 to 2003.