Performance was the film acting debut for Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones. Rarely awed by his sitters, Beaton and Jagger were natural friends, both keenly drawn to the lure of success. The result of this friendship was what Mick Jagger called ‘some nice pictures’. Their second meeting was during the Rolling Stones’ momentous holiday to Marrakech in March 1967, where Beaton’s fascination with the decadence of the band was sparked. Of Jagger he said, ‘he was a Tarzan of Piero de Cosimo... He is sexy, yet completely sexless. As a model he is a natural’. The trip was the first time that Beaton met Jagger’s onscreen love interest Anita Pallenberg, of whom he took a rather more scathing view, remarking that she had a ‘dirty white face, dirty blackened eyes, dirty canary drops of hair, barbaric jewellery’. Pallenberg was in a relationship with Jagger’s bandmate Keith Richards – a fact that was the cause of much friction amongst the group. During what was ostensibly a simulated love-scene in a canopied antique bed, it was widely thought that Jagger and Pallenberg ‘began to make love in earnest’, whilst Richards sat in a car outside the filming location.

Beaton’s photographs define a glittering generation, as he captured from behind his camera lens the great and famous personalities of the 1920s to the 1970s - from eminent artists, to iconic actors to influential philosophers and international royalty. The appeal held by the Swinging Sixties was matchless, and Beaton prided himself on being a past master at bridging the generation gap and spotting new waves in culture. Indeed photographing this generation was a natural progression from the Bright Young Things of his own youth. Sotheby’s is the privileged guardian of this matchless repository of over 100,000 negatives and 9,000 vintage prints from the legendary photographer’s personal collection – a transfer that was negotiated by Beaton in 1977 in order to preserve its role for future generations.