A previously unseen photograph by Hungarian-British photojournalist Michael Peto of Elizabeth Taylorat the beginning of her love affair with Richard Burton is to go on display at the National Portrait Gallery from September 2013, part of a worldwide season of exhibitions celebrating his work.

The picture shows the pair during a BBC radio recording in October 1963. The couple had met the previous year during the filming of Cleopatra, and went on to be married in March 1964.

It is one of 10 taken by Peto in the 1950s and 1960s, recently secured from the Peto Collection at the University of Dundee, and will go on show alongside a rare portrait of Samuel Beckett photographed in Paris in 1961, and a picture of Paul McCartney with the Beatles during filming of the 1965 film Help!

Peto studied in Paris before his work was first published in The Observer in March 1949, and he subsequently became a regular contributor alongside other celebrated photojournalists including Jane Bown, Peter Keen and David Sim.

Following his death in 1970, his family donated the photographer’s archive of 130,000 negatives and prints to the Scottish university.

Terence Pepper, head of photographs collection at the National Portrait Gallery told BLOUIN ARTINFO UK: “I first became aware of his work when the Sunday Times did a big spread on it and I tore out the page. I thought it was something we should investigate.

“Then in 2011 I got an email from Dundee asking for advice and told them I’d love to meet, so we went up there to look through boxes of material. We found there was quite a lot that hadn’t been discovered, so we realised this was the first opportunity to show some of these portraits in London.

“He’s a lost name in British photography. And this is about rediscovering someone and trying to write them back into history. These are great photographs which should be in the NPG and we felt the time was right.”

Future displays are planned for The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at The Lincoln Centerin New York from October 2, 2013 to January 4, 2014 and at The Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh in 2014.

Michael Peto Photographs: Mandela to McCartney, from September 17, 2013, Room 32 National Portrait Gallery London