The Bite Magazine - Spring/Summer 2020 - Issue 27

bite exhibition I n Michèle Gerber Klien’s book Charles James: Portrait of an Unreasonable Man, the Bright Young Things were de- scribed as a glamorous, publicity-seeking and influential group whom fashion and portrait photographer Cecil Bea- ton would capture on camera all the time. For the first time, his portraits of this specific group of young people from the golden age are brought together in a major new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London from 12 March to 7 June 2020. Consisting of 170 works, many of which are rarely exhibited, Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things explores the extravagant world of the glamorous and stylish Bright Young Things of the 1920s and 1930s, seen through the eyes of the renowned British photographer. In their heyday, these Bohemian young aristocrats and socialists, some of whom were heavy drinkers and drug users, were known to throw elaborate fancy dress parties and go on elaborate treasure hunts through London at night. Whilst there were many individuals in the Bright Young Things, the leading characters, some of whom Beaton be- came close to and helped refine his remarkable photographic style in the early years, were artists and friends Rex Whistler and Stephen Tennant; set and costume designer Oliver Mes- sel; composer WilliamWalton; modernist poets Iris Tree and Nancy Cunard; glamorous socialites Edwina Mountbatten and Diana Guinness (née Mitford); and actresses and anglo- philes Talullah Bankhead and Anna May Wong. The lesser-known individuals worth mentioning were style icons Paula Gellibrand, the Marquesa de Casa Maury, and Baba, Princesse de Faucigny-Lucinge; the eccentric compos- er and aesthete Lord Berners; modernist poet Brian Howard; ballet dancer Tilly Losch; and Dolly Wilde, Oscar’s equally flamboyant niece. There were also the older outspoken poet and critic Edith Sitwell; the famously witty social figure Lady Diana Cooper; artist and Irish patriot Hazel, Lady Lavery; and the extraordinary, bejewelled Lady Alexander, whose husband produced Oscar Wilde’s comedies. As well as featuring his subjects, Beaton is portrayed in the exhibition through self-portraits and by his contemporaries. “Socially avaricious, he was a much-photographed figure and a celebrity in his own right. Beaton’s transformation from middle-class suburban schoolboy to glittering society figure and the unrivalled star of Vogue revealed social mobility un- thinkable before the Great War. He used his artistic skills, his ambition, and his larger-than-life personality to become part of a world that he would not surely have joined as a right.” Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Beaton’s photographs of his friends and heroes placed them under perceptive, colourful, and sympathetic scrutiny. Several years later, these images are admired for their sense of style and society standing during the jazz age decades whether it’s through the arts, theatre, music, or poetry. It shows the beauty and intricate details of black and white imagery that reminds you of the Hollywood movies of that era. One of the images shows Beaton standing on top of a hill in Sandwich dressed in a polo neck and trousers with his dog on a cloudy day. Another is a painting of Lois Sturt by Ambrose McEvoy, who was famous for being the most painted woman in England. The lover of the Earl of Pembroke and the Duke of Kent, she later married Evan Morgan, 2nd Viscount Tre- degar. She was among the founders of the notorious all-night treasure hunts and was fined for driving at 51 miles an hour through Regent’s Park at 2am. You’ll come across a rather ghostly picture of George Dadie Rylands, an Elizabethan and Shakespearean actor who went on to become a British literary scholar and theatre director. The photograph, Beaton’s first contribution to British Vogue, was published much to his surprise since he said it was “a slightly out-of-focus snapshot of [Rylands] as Webster’s Duchess of Malfi standing in the subaqueous light outside the men’s lavatory of the A.D.C Theatre at Cambridge.” Perhaps the most captivating image of the Bright Young Things was shot on the lawn of Wilsford Manor in Wilsford cum Lake, near Amesbury in which six of the rising stars, both male and female, are dressed in ruffles and bows, high socks, with slicked back, loose, or wavy hair, and make-up, holding small baskets, straw hats, and long thin sticks. The occasion for which they were dressed is not revealed but as they liked to dress up in costumes, it was perhaps for an ad- venturous day in the countryside. Maurice Beck and Helen Macgregor captured Beaton and Stephen Tennant beautifully in a pose at an angle in 1927 that sees them wearing striped polo shirts and looking to their left. Beaton’s right arm is bent at his side while Tennant’s right arm leans across his companion’s back. Cecil’s sister Baba Beaton, the Hon Mrs. Charles Baillie-Harrison, and Lady Bridget Poulett look like three starlets from a movie as they are captured by the photographer surrounded by balloons with plastic covering. Cecil Beaton at Sandwich, early 1920s. © The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive