Cecil Beaton, a New Exhibition in London

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Flamboyant, rebellious, irresponsible, glamorous, the “Bright Young Things”, effectively a youth cult of aristocratic socialites, haute bohemian party-givers and lower-born self-publicists, cut a dramatic swathe through the 1920s and 1930s.

Their exploits, a headlong pursuit of hedonism – practical jokes, parties, costume balls – were written up almost daily in newspaper columns to the amazement of the young and the horror of the establishment. Their clever and inventive dealings with the media in the aftermath of the Great War foreshadowed our contemporary notion of modern celebrity culture.

Many of the leading cast would become well known: writers Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, composers William Walton and Constant Lambert, stage designers Oliver Messel and Rex Whistler. Others would remain in the shadows, having accomplished almost nothing other than their own self-creations, such as aesthete Brian Howard and Stephen Tennant, the famously orchidaceous scion of a fractured dynasty. Drink, drugs and burn-out on the eve of another world war would claim more, famously and tragically, the dazzling “it girls” Brenda Dean Paul and troubled “wild child” Lois Sturt, debutante of the year and “the brightest of the Bright Young Things”.

Their recording angel was Cecil Beaton, whose journey from middle-class suburban schoolboy to shining society ornament and star of Vogue revealed a social mobility unthinkable before the war, prefiguring the meritocracy of the 1960s. His dazzling photographs and incisive caricatures chronicled the original “Lost Generation”, lost in time.

The Bright Young Things, 1927 Beaton organised and directed a series of late summer tableaux en fe?te champe?tre emulating the stylised, pastoral paintings of Lancret and Watteau and Fragonard. The group of rococo neo-Arcadians, here standing on a bridge, comprised Zita and Baby Jungman, Georgia Sitwell, Stephen Tennant, Beaton himself and, appearing the least comfortable in knee-britches and ruffled shirts, Rex Whistler and William Walton. The painted faces of the mock shepherds and shepherdesses was a triumph of artifice, the Bright Young Things in excelsis. Later that same day, they visited the great Bloomsbury figure, Lytton Strachey, who declared them “strange creatures – with just a few feathers where brains should be”.

0833_UV_2001_FRONT_CECIL_BEATON_23334171.indd The Bright Young Things, 1927

pagina 1 / 5 Edward ‘Boy’ Le Bas Painter and aesthete, 1924 Le Bas, the son of a wealthy industrialist and known as “Boy”, was a school friend of Beaton’s. Later they went up to Cambridge together and immersed themselves in student theatrical life. The two friends acquired a small studio and collaborated on a production of Pirandello’s Henry IV (1924), Beaton designing the costumes, Le Bas painting the scenery. That same year, Cecil took this, his best portrait of Le Bas in his starring role in a play titled The Watched Pot. To one reviewer, Le Bas was “perfect in every gesture; throughout he gave a magnificent impersonation of a woman of the world”. While his costume, designed by Beaton, was considered the pie?ce de re?sistance.

pagina 2 / 5 0833_UV_2001_FRONT_CECIL_BEATON_23334171.indd Edward ‘Boy’ Le Bas Painter and aesthete, 1924

Hon. Stephen Tennant, 1927 Osbert Sitwell called him the “last professional beauty”, and the Hon. Stephen Tennant, in an effort to prove him right, became Beaton’s most enthusiastic sitter. With Tennant, Beaton entered a new world of wealth, privilege, comfort, beauty, culture and freedom. He would model his life, as well as his looks, on the androgynous, stick-thin, golden-haired aesthete who lived his own life as if he had stepped out of a fairy tale. When he appeared as Prince Charming at a London pageant in a pink wig and satin frock coat, so ravishing was he that Vogue’s writer mistakenly identified him as Lady Ashley in her Rosenkavalier costume and wrote the evening up accordingly. Beaton created for Tennant the self-image he sought: the most beautiful and romantic creature of the day, the very epitome of perfection, the living embodiment of the “Bright Young Thing”.

pagina 3 / 5 0833_UV_2001_FRONT_CECIL_BEATON_23334171.indd Hon. Stephen Tennant, 1927

Images from Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things, National Portrait Gallery, 12 March – 7 June, 2020.

Read the full article by Robin Muir and see the photographs by Cecil Beaton in the February issue of L'Uomo, on

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