Cecil Beaton at The Garden Museum II

 

'We ate breakfast drank hot drinks and enjoyed the spectacle confronting us of the garlanded house, the ilex trees with bird-cages hanging from their dark moss-green branches in the light of the early morning sun.  The windows of the orangery, still lit from within displayed a word of artificially brilliant colours.  I felt that, as ever, Ashcombe had played up to the occasion.'

     And so, finally, to 'Cecil Beaton's Garden Party'.  This small exhibition, which has been curated by Emma House, and designed by Luke Edward Hall, looks at Beaton as a creator of gardens that act (in a sort Baroque manner) as a unifying element in his life, being not merely the physical backdrop to his rich social life and his photography, but the inspiration to further creativity.  It was perhaps fitting, and purely serendipitous, I hasten to add, that I should have visited the exhibition in Ascot Week.

     Perhaps at this point a little explanation is needed. Cecil Beaton (1904-1980) was one of the most important, and influential, British photographers of the mid 20th century.  He was also a designer for stage and film.  He won an 'Academy Award for Costume Design' for his work on Vincent Minnelli's 1958 adaptation of 'Gigi'; and (more importantly for this exhibition) two further Oscars for Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction for George Cukor's 1964 adaptation of Lerner and Loewe's musical 'My Fair Lady'.*  He has been described as a polymath. Beaton was also a dandy, with amazing personal style. An aesthete. An inhabitant of the Beau Monde. He was a (waspish) diarist, and as this exhibition neatly shows, a very keen gardener.  Piquant and perennially fascinating; perhaps his greatest work of art was himself.

     Beaton created two gardens in his life, both in Wiltshire: Ashcombe and Reddish (actually they sound like a - What? - A solicitors? A department store?).  In the interwar years at Ashcombe (he lived there 1930-45) there were flamboyant fetes - all those 'bright young things' nipping around dressed as nymphs and shepherds, and all that. Life at Reddish, where he lived from 1947 until his death in 1980, was perhaps a bit more sedate, but there was a steady stream of 'the great and the good' including the sort that this blog admires: David Hockney & Peter Schlesinger, Sir Roy Strong & Julia Trevelyan Oman, Patrick Proctor.   

      Luke Edward hall has decorated the exhibition space - tin foil in the display cases - with a nod to Beaton's early portraiture when he was heavily influenced by Surrealism and did strange things with Edith Sitwell.  The exhibition gave a rounded sense of Beaton the man - of a life, one might say - with paintings, designs and letters and objects.  Of his work for stage and screen the exhibition concentrated on three works: 'The Chalk Garden' (1955), the opera 'Turandot' (1962-3), and 'My Fair Lady' (1964).  There are number of still photographs - studio shots - of the costumes used on film, including from the famous Ascot scene.  I loved the film poster for 'My Fair Lady' with artwork by Bob Peak - which manages somehow to show Rex Harrison for the randy old goat he was.

 'My garden, is the greatest joy of my life, after my friends.  Both are worth living for.'

    The Garden Museum is, by rights, the sort of place I'd love -  it was in parts fascinating - but in general the place was tired, lost and dirty, in places just downright filthy.   And there there was the 'cooler than thou' attitude of the staff in the café.  It was like intruding upon a private party rather than a public space. 

*  I remember when I first saw 'My Fair Lady'.  It was Christmas Day, BBC1 (they had dropped the Christmas Day circus by then).  It was a minor cultural event, and I was bowled over.