Why you didn't want to get on the wrong side of Cecil Beaton

Spectator

04-06-2025

'Remember, Roy, white flowers are the only chic ones.' So Cecil Beaton remarked to Roy Strong, possibly as a mild put-down to the young curator. But it was a curious put-down to make because Beaton broke his own rule happily, buying mountainous armfuls of speckled yellow, pink and scarlet carnations at Covent Garden and longing to fill his borders with Korean chrysanthemums and purple salvias. This small exhibition at the Garden Museum enjoys the sweet-pea surface of Beaton's creations, while giving a flash of the glinting secateur that also made up such an important part of his personality.
Beaton's ability as an image-maker was astounding. Those famous photos of his Cambridge days with the Bright Young Things are still outrageous, a mad foray into camp pastoral. In a huge bromide print from 1927 of Rex Whistler strumming a lute in a melancholy grove, every leaf seems to sigh. We're not altogether surprised to learn that Beaton left St John's, Cambridge, without a degree, but a glittering career clearly beckoned. Stage design, photography, floristry, costume: he did them all.
He was a ruthlessly flattering photographer, making Wallis Simpson look positively vulnerable (a lonely wee thing against a big, wild wood), and he became sought after to the extent that he was also invited to photograph the Queen in 1939. He reached always towards elegance and fantasy, using blooms to garnish and garland. He was a master of allusion, adding an ear of corn to a country posy or using angel's trumpets (Brugmansia) to create an ethereal atmosphere around the model Penelope Tree.
Of course Beaton loved flowers; he delivered beauty with a capital B.