Adorable Story #88: Peter Beard

The Last of the Adventurers

Peter Beard, The End of the Game, 1965

Peter Beard was a celebrated photographer and artist known for his captivating wildlife photography and adventurous lifestyle. He studied art history at Yale, where his passion for Africa and conservation began. Beard became famous with his groundbreaking work The End of the Game, which highlighted the threats to African wildlife.

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Table of Contents: Early Years / Africa / Rise to Fame / Flamboyant Lifestyle / Personal Life / Later years

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“He is half-Tarzan, half-Byron”

— Bob Colacello

Early years

Peter Hill Beard was born in Manhattan on January 22nd, 1938 into a distinguished family in New York City: his father, Anson McCook Beard Jr., was a successful railroad executive (his great grandfather was the railroad magnate James Jerome Hill), and his mother, Roseanne Hoar Beard, came from a line of wealthy industrialists.

The family’s affluence provided Peter with early exposure to art and culture.

A Voigtländer bellows camera given to him by a grandmother sparked a lifelong obsession with recording the people and things he saw around him, a habit that broadened to include painting, journal keeping, and collage making. He combined all of these forms in his artwork.

He would later recollect that his obvious artistic gifts were lost on his parents.

“Nobody said, ‘Your pictures are good’ or ‘You have a good eye,’ What they said was: “‘Good hobby. When are you going to do something worthwhile?’”

His father sent him to the prestigious Buckley School in Manhattan, followed by Pomfret School in Connecticut. Peter’s formative years were marked by summers in Newport, Rhode Island, where his fascination with nature began to take root.

Later, at Yale University, he dropped out of medical school and studied art history, further nurturing his passion for photography and exploration.

Peter began shooting fashion portfolios for Vogue while he was at Yale and kept a hand in magazine photography throughout his career.

His interest in photography blossomed in those years, influenced by the likes of Karen Blixen, the Danish author whose account of her life in Kenya was turned into the acclaimed Hollywood film Out of Africa.

Africa

In 1955, Peter traveled to Africa for the first time in the company of Quentin Keynes, a great-grandson of Charles Darwin: the African continent would become central to his life and work.