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Art and Artifice TRANSPORT LP2 ART AND ARTIFICE Rarely exhibited prints by renowned photographer Cecil Beaton go on display in London ans of the famed 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, which charts the relationship between Charles Ryder and the Fflamboyant Sebastian Flyte, may not have realised that the latter character was based on a real-life persona – Stephen Tennant, a flâneur in 1920s England whose sole aim in life was “to do as little as possible”. Tennant also inspired the character of Cedric Hampton in Nancy Mitford’s 1949 novel Love in a Cold Climate. 2 This, among a host of other insights, is one of the discoveries made by exploring the extravagant world of the glamorous and stylish Bright Young Things of the 1920s and 30s, seen through the eyes of photographer Cecil Beaton, at London’s National Portrait Gallery until June 7. Beaton was friends with many of those he shot, and his subjects run the gamut: famed costume designers (Oliver Messel), composers (William Walton), socialites (Edwina Mountbatten and Diana Mitford), actresses (Anna May Wong and Tallulah Bankhead) and ballet dancers (Tilly Losch). 3 4 There’s even Dolly Wilde, writer Oscar’s Wilde’s niece, and the bejewelled Lady Alexander, whose husband produced Wilde’s comedies and became one of Beaton’s early patrons. Beaton was such a social butterfly and magnet that he became a much- photographed figure and a celebrity in his own right. A middle-class suburban schoolboy, he used his artistic skills and ambition to become part of a world he wasn’t born into. Yet, throughout the ’20s and ’30s, his photographs place his friends and heroes under perceptive, colourful and sympathetic scrutiny. In the end, he outgrew the period and 1 became a distinguished war photographer for the Ministry of Information. Post-war, he had shot an inventory of the 20th “The exhibition brings to life a deliriously he evolved into a photographer for Britain’s century’s most luminous figures, from eccentric, glamorous and creative era of 5 6 royal family, propelling them into the Greta Garbo to Picasso, from Queen British cultural life,” says Robin Muir, modern age. He was also a set and costume Elizabeth II to Winston Churchill, curator of Bright Young Things and a designer for theatre and film during the from Coco Chanel to Audrey Hepburn contributing editor to Vogue (to which golden age of Hollywood (for which he and Marilyn Monroe, and from David Beaton himself contributed for more won three Oscars), as well as a painter, Hockney to Andy Warhol. Just days than 50 years). “It combines high society illustrator and essayist. before he died in 1980, he had written and the avant-garde, artists and writers, Beaton was knighted in 1972; by the to the Queen Mother asking to take her and socialites and partygoers, all set against time a stroke had curtailed his work, 80th-birthday portraits. the rhythms of the Jazz Age.” by CDLP 7 8 1. Cecil Beaton by Paul Tanqueray, 1937. National Portrait Gallery, London 2. Constant Lambert by Christopher Wood, 1926. National Portrait Gallery, London 10 3. Edward Le Bas as Mrs Vulpy in The Watched Pot by 9 Cecil Beaton, 1924 4. Tallulah Bankhead by Cecil Beaton, 1932. The Museum of the City of New York 5. George ‘Dadie’ Rylands as the Duchess of Malfi by Cecil Beaton, 1924 6. The Hon. Lois Sturt by Ambrose McEvoy, 1920. Philip Mould & Company 7. Cecil Beaton and Stephen Tennant by Maurice Beck and Helen Macgregor, 1927. National Portrait Gallery, London 8. The Silver Soap Suds (L to R: Baba Beaton, the Hon. Mrs Charles Baillie-Hamilton and Lady Bridget Poulett) by Cecil Beaton, 1930 9. Self Portrait by Rex Whistler, 1935. National Portrait Gallery, London 10. The Bright Young Things at Wilsford by Cecil Beaton, 1927 11. Chinese actress Anna May Wong by Cecil Beaton, 1929 12. Paula Gellibrand, Marquesa de Casa Maury by Cecil Beaton, 1928 13. Oliver Messel in his costume for Paris in Helen! by Cecil Beaton, 1932 14. Nancy and Baba Beaton by Cecil Beaton, 1926 15. Edith Sitwell at Sussex Gardens by Cecil Beaton, 1926 12 Images: © Estate of Paul Tanqueray (1); © National Portrait Gallery, London (4); © The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive (3, 5, 8, 10-15) 8, 5, (3, Gallery, London (4); © The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive Portrait (1); © National Tanqueray © Estate of Paul Images: 11 13 14 15.
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