Timed to coincide with the National Portrait Gallery Exhibition “Portrait of an Icon” curated by Terence Pepper, and Helen Trompeteler, Lucy Bell Gallery presents previously unseen images of Audrey Hepburn, from the archives of George Douglas, and Angela Williams.

The archive of George Douglas, one of the key Picture Post photographers of the 1950s, was almost lost after his death in 2010. Stored in rusting filing cabinets in the basement of his Brighton home, thousands of unsorted negatives, from picture essays on celebrities like Audrey Hepburn and Vivien Leigh to photojournalism documenting everything from the Queen’s rat catcher to the work of one of the first speech therapy clinics, lay jumbled, dusty and forgotten. These previously unseen pictures of Audrey Hepburn in New York in 1952, are part of this remarkable legacy. At the time she was the toast of Broadway for her role in Gigi but still had not had a leading role in a movie and was relatively unknown. Douglas firmly believed she was going to be a huge star. He risked his own savings on a freelance trip to America. Persuading her to work with him was essential – but there was no prior agreement in place. Everything depended on her co-operation.

Angela Williams (Coombes) worked with Norman Parkinson from 1962 -1967 , as his assistant, but also as a successful portrait photographer in her own right, working on commissions with the journalist Jeremy Banks on shoots for magazines such as The Observer Colour Supplement. These rare images, many of which have not been printed before, come from the original negatives, some are printed full frame by the same printer that Parkinson later used, Robin Bell. They reveal Hepburn as delicately brilliant, sparklingly fine, Williams has captured both her timelessness and mood, in that brief hour.