Photo credit: Bianca Jagger by Cecil Beaton 1978 © Cecil Beaton Archive Conde Nast
We are thrilled to share details of the new exhibition at the Garden Museum, Cecil Beaton’s Garden Party, which opens tomorrow (14 May) and will run until 21 September.
About
Photographer, interior, costume and set designer and diarist Cecil Beaton (1904 – 1980) was well-known for his lifelong love of flowers. This new exhibition, curated by the Garden Museum’s Emma House and designed by artist and designer Luke Edward Hall, will explore how gardens influenced, and were used, in Beaton’s work.
The museum explains: “Tracing Beaton’s horticultural journey through his gardens at Ashcombe House and Reddish House in Wiltshire, the exhibition will comprise photographs, paintings, drawings, costume and set design, many of which have never been publicly displayed before. It will include Beaton’s personal diaries, photographs of friends and family gathering in his gardens, opera and ballet costume sketches and dresses of his own design. In looking to his gardens, Cecil Beaton’s Garden Party will explore the distinct role flowers played in developing Beaton’s creative practice; from pioneering the use of painted and fresh flowers as backdrops for fashion photography and Royal portraits, to lavish floral installations created for parties with flowers from his own gardens, to the famous floral costumes worn by Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (1964).”
Also on display will be his original costume designs for ballets Les Sirènes and Apparitions, Margot Fonteyn’s Apparitions headdress and a costume from Marguerite and Armand. Furthermore, there will be both illustrations and a model of the design for Turandot which was inspired by China’s bamboo gardens. On loan from the Royal Ballet & Opera, this will be the first time they have been on public display.
Getting there
The Garden Museum can be reached from Hertford Street by taking the underground on the Jubilee line from Green Park to Westminster.