{"id":116753,"date":"2025-10-12T04:46:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T04:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/116753\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T04:46:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T04:46:15","slug":"inside-cecil-beatons-fashionable-world-as-a-new-exhibition-opens-at-the-national-portrait-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/116753\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Cecil Beaton\u2019s fashionable world, as a new exhibition opens at the National Portrait Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image<\/p>\n

Cecil Beaton\u2019s magnificent mise-en-sc\u00e8nes extended across photography, film \u2013 and into interiors. At Ashcombe, his pre-war house in Wiltshire, he slept in a red and gold carousel-inspired four-poster bed designed by Rex Whistler, surrounded by murals featuring circus figures in trompe l\u2019oeil niches by himself, Rex, Lord Berners (on whom Nancy Mitford based her character of Lord Merlin) and other artists. His Syrie Maugham-influenced studio-cum-sitting room had curtains made from hessian sacking studded with 300,000 pearl buttons, and the bathroom was covered with ink outlines of guests\u2019 hands, so Cecil could lie in the bath and \u2018compare Siegfried Sassoon\u2019s thumb with Sacheverell Sitwell\u2019s.\u2019 But, interior design is \u2018the most fugitive and fragile of art forms,\u2019 noted historian Steven Brindle, and none of it exists now. The house suffered bomb damage during World War Two, the ceiling of the famed Circus Room fell in \u2013 and, in 1945, Cecil was forced to give up the lease altogether.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018Best<\/p>\n

\u2018Best Invitation of the Season\u2019 Nina De Voe in Ballgown by Balmain, 1951, by Cecil Beaton. Photograph by Cecil Beaton. Courtesy of Cond\u00e9 Nast Archive<\/p>\n

Fortunately, other strands of Cecil\u2019s extraordinary creativity have fared significantly better. And this autumn we\u2019re being offered opportunity to explore his ingenious world via a glorious exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery<\/a>. Curated by Robin Muir<\/a>, a long-time contributor to House & Garden\u2019s sister magazine, Vogue, it demonstrates how Cecil elevated fashion and portrait photography into an artform, while developing a new aesthetic that combined wit and sparkling frivolity with beauty and elegance in a manner that always seemed fresh. It also looks at the studied artifice on which the triumphs were built: \u2018I don\u2019t want people to know me as I really am, but as I\u2019m trying and pretending to be,\u2019 Cecil said, while still a child. \u2018What Cecil wore, what he possessed, what friends he treasured, what he was surrounded by \u2013 all were paramount to his sense of self,\u2019 explains Robin. And this included the aforementioned interiors: \u2018His homes, whether owned or rented or the many hotel suites he was given carte blanche to transform into that inimitable Beaton-esque style, these became extensions of his persona, reflections of a carefully curated self-image.\u2019 Occasionally, these spaces even provided backdrops. Hence, between superbly ethereal images of high-society, royals, and Hollywood stars, we are afforded occasional glimpses of lost rooms that, as they evolved, mirrored Cecil\u2019s professional progress. And, with words, we can expand the view.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cecil Beaton\u2019s magnificent mise-en-sc\u00e8nes extended across photography, film \u2013 and into interiors. At Ashcombe, his pre-war house in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[595,365,362,363,364,366,18,117,3124,19,17,5,71568],"class_list":{"0":"post-116753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-events","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-the-history-of-interior-design"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}