The first name might sound like a crumbling country pile in England, not one of a long forgotten American pop photographer of the 'Swinging Sixties', who at his peak, shot the infamous Dali for the cover of GQ in 1963.
This signed silver-tone photograph in homage to the Surrealist Movement and its exponents like Man Ray and of course Salvador Dali himself, is a unique piece of modern art and one of a very few original images left by the photographer.
It seems sometime later, Hall inexplicably destroyed his entire back catalogue of negatives and film in a bonfire at the London home he shared with his wife, once the editor of the revolutionary women's magazine Nova, before she tragically succumbed to blindness.
It is a mad surreal tale with more than a nod to Salvador Dali's private-life, all of which is well documented and known. Sometime co-owner of The Pheasantry nightclub on The King's Road, Chad Hall appears to have burnt himself out in the hedonistic times of the Sixties, leaving little or no trace of him on the search-engines of today.
Much of the information I have learnt about Chadwick Hall came directly from the client I bought the picture from. Gifted it by his pal Chad way back in 1963, somewhere 'between the Lady Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP', this former Chelsea College of Art student later went onto to create the interiors of the famous Biba fashion brand.
The photograph of Dali by Chad Hall is signed & sold in its original ebony frame at £1800 in my gallery Old Coves in Deal.
The picture includes a copy of the GQ front-cover of Dali as provenance.
