Cecil Beaton’s Garden Party, the exhibition, isn’t, alas, just about that fabulous fete champetre he held at his country home in Wiltshire in 1937 for his gilded young friends. That was one of those parties that seemed to define the age, what with everyone dressed like something out of Watteau , and our host in a Surrealist frock coat decorated with roses and eggshells, surmounted by a disconcerting rabbit mask. The studio was hung with swags of roses and the phaeton filled with bundles of meadowsweet; bird cages hung from the trees. They don’t do parties like that any more.
This show is, rather, about Beaton’s relations with gardens and with flowers: as props, as aspects of his adored houses, as dress design, as theatrical decoration, as interior decoration and simply as necessities of life. He calls to mind Nancy Mitford’s response to the question of how she would spend an income of £500 a year: “£480 on cut flowers”, she declared, as her opening bid.
