Wall St.Journal Weekend 29Feb2020

C14| Saturday/Sunday, February 29 - March 1, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

C

ecil Beaton, one of
20th-century Britain’s
most celebrated pho-
tographers, has caught
up with the Instagram
age. In 2016, the curator Robin Muir
began posting Beaton’s black-and-
white photo portraits from the 1920s
and ’30s on the digital platform. One
of Mr. Muir’s followers was Sarah
Tinsley, executive director of Lon-
don’s National Portrait Gallery, who
asked him if he could curate an exhi-
bition of Beaton’s early photography.
The result is “Cecil Beaton’s
Bright Young Things,” which opens
on March 12. The show assembles 80
photographs by Beaton, many of
them vintage prints, along with
books, magazines, films, illustrations
and other ephemera—including
Beaton’s first camera, a Box Brownie
that he received at the age of 10, in
1914.
Bright Young Things was the nick-
name bestowed by London’s tabloids
on a group of 1920s society figures,
including writers, composers and
artists, whose glamorous antics fas-
cinated the public. Beaton was one of
them, and his photographs contrib-
uted to their celebrity. “Beaton’s
early portraits are all about surface
sheen,” Mr. Muir says. “It’s all ‘how
beautiful can I make you look?’”
Digging through Beaton’s archives
at Sotheby’s in London, Mr. Muir dis-
covered the photographer’s own vin-
tage print of his most emblematic
group portrait from the 1920s, fea-
turing the Bright Young Things
dressed in 18th-century costumes as
shepherds and shepherdesses. The
group, which includes Beaton him-
self—he composed the photo but
someone else actually took it—are
standing on a bridge at the Wilsford
Manor estate of the socialite Stephen
Tennant, the site of many riotous
parties.
“What I found really interesting
about looking at these early portraits
is the improvised aesthetic of it all,”
says Sabina Jaskot-Gill, curator of
photographs at the National Portrait
Gallery. “The way you have sheets
hung up using brooms; you have tin-
foil scattered everywhere and poly-
styrene bubbles. [Beaton’s] creativity
involved using all sorts of different
materials that wouldn’t have tradi-

MY FAVORITE READ OF THE PAST
year was Hisham Matar’s “A Month in
Siena,” a lovely little book in which the
author, the son of a Libyan dissident
kidnapped by the Gadhafi regime three
decades ago, recounts the consolation
and solace he found wandering the art
museums, alleyways and public spaces
of that titular Italian city.
One of the appeals of Mr. Matar’s
book is that it examines the artists of
the Sienese School, including Duccio di
Buoninsegna, Ambrogio Lorenzetti and
Giovanni di Paolo. Most of the paint-
ings Mr. Matar visits are located in Si-
ena, of course, though one notable ex-
ception is Di Paolo’s “Paradise” (1445)
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a
visit to which serves as something of a
postscript to his Siena sojourn.
“Paradise” is in keeping with the
religious subject matter of Di Paolo’s
major works. Over the course of the
artist’s life, from 1398 to 1482, he de-
picted the Virgin Mary, several Chris-
tian saints and a number of biblical
scenes. Around 1441, he illuminated a
volume of Dante’s “Paradise,” the third
section of the Divine Comedy. Surely
this informed the execution of his own
painting of the same name.
“Paradise” (Di Paolo’s, not Dante’s)
was created as a predella panel, part
of a row of smaller paintings at the
bottom of an altarpiece, in this case

one originally in Siena’s Church of San

Domenico but now in Florence’s Uffizi

Gallery. (Another Di Paolo panel from

the same altarpiece, portraying the

creation of the universe and the expul-

sion of Adam and Eve from Eden, is

currently displayed alongside “Para-

dise.”) It depicts, in vibrant colors,

saints and angels embracing one an-

other in a verdant garden. There are

14 separate encounters, each between

two participants, except for the bot-

tom right corner of the painting where

two nuns greet a monk. The catalog

for a 1980s Met exhibition (“Painting

in Renaissance Siena: 1420-1500”)

identifies some of these figures: Au-

gustine, Anthony Abbot and followers

of St. Catherine of Siena.

The Sienese painters aren’t nearly

as well known as their counterparts in

Renaissance Florence. They also had a

different artistic sensibility. The major

Florentine artists, particularly those of

the 15th and 16th centuries, were com-

mitted naturalists who prized their

classical heritage and sought to depict

the world as it appeared. The Sienese,

meanwhile, were unapologetic about

shrouding their subjects in sumptuous

and highly decorative imagery. This is

what Di Paolo does in “Paradise,” and

the painting’s lavish features lend it a

bucolic and sublime quality that in-

creases its emotional power.

Gazing at the scene in its entirety—

it’s a small painting, at a mere 18 1/2

by 16 inches, but there’s much to see

in it—one is struck by the lush ground

upon which the various figures stand,

the fruited trees at the top of the pic-

ture and the flowers dispersed

throughout. In true Sienese fashion,

the whole image seems to shimmer.

The holy vestments worn by the paint-

ing’s inhabitants also catch the eye;

those outfits depicted in red and blue

stand out the most. The facial expres-

sions are by turns joyful, relieved, ec-

static. Mr. Matar, in “A Month in Si-

this style hadn’t worked out sophisti-

cated techniques to depict people and

objects in space, relying instead on an

up-is-back ethos: The higher some-

thing is placed on the canvas, the far-

ther away we’re meant to perceive it.

In “Paradise,” this is visible in the po-

sitioning of the figures and the trees,

which appear to be stacked. Renais-

sance artists had largely supplanted

this approach with their mastery over

linear perspective, and a number of Di

Paolo’s works do showcase this inno-

vation. But in “Paradise” he has no

need to render his garden as it would

appear in real life, for what he paints

is not of this Earth. The spatial dy-

namics may not look realistic, but they

certainly enhance the painting’s gravi-

tas. Another revolt against Florence.

Di Paolo’s painting is naturally in

dialogue with the Divine Comedy; both

works mutually enrich one another,

and so Met visitors who want to inten-

sify their viewing of “Paradise” will be

well-served by reading—or re-read-

ing—Dante beforehand. Dante’s narra-

tive poem has been read as an allegory

of the soul’s journey toward God, after

which its author knows the “love that

moves the sun and other stars.” The

inhabitants of Di Paolo’s work appear

to know love themselves. The painting

is the very picture of joy, as the ex-

pressions on their faces attest.

Giovanni di Paolo spent his life

painting Christian scenes like “Para-

dise.” But one need not be a believer

to appreciate the opulent qualities

that make it a jewel of the Sienese

School. Religious or not, you may find

yourself staring at this one for a while.

Mr. Shull is an assistant books editor

at the Journal. THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK

BYBENJAMINSHULL

BYTOBIASGREY

A Celebration

Not of This Earth

MASTERPIECE|‘PARADISE’ (1445), BY GIOVANNI DI PAOLO

ena,” imagines that two of the figures

might be doomed lovers Héloïse and

Abelard, the French nun and theolo-

gian, in love on Earth and reunited

here in Paradise.

Di Paolo was a Renaissance master,

but he was also wedded to the earlier

International Gothic style, ascendant

in Italy and France in the late 14th and

early 15th century. Artists working in

A jewel of the Sienese School

with echoes of Dante.

At far left, Cecil

Beaton’s portrait of

Oliver Messel,

costumed as Paris in

a play about Helen of

Troy. Above, Beaton’s

photo of his sisters

Nancy and Baba.

Left, Beaton (at left)

and Stephen

Tennant.

ICONS

Youth and Beauty

In the 1920s, photographer Cecil Beaton captured the glamour

of London’s ‘Bright Young Things.’

tionally been brought into a studio.”

Beaton honed his craft by taking

photographs of his mother and his

younger sisters; one photo from 1926

capture their reflections in a piano

lid. The exhibition also includes

Beaton’s first credited photograph to

appear in British Vogue, which he

took in 1924 while he was a student

at Cambridge—a portrait of the the-

ater director George Rylands dressed

in drag as “The Duchess of Malfi.”

Other rarities include an early por-

trait of Steven Runciman, later to

achieve fame as a historian, pen-

sively holding a tulip, and a picture

of the Australian-born “It girl” Sheila

Chisholm with her head inside a bell-

jar. “Beaton is very much influenced

by early Edwardian studio portrai-

ture,” Ms. Jaskot-Gill says. “But

there are also occasions where he

took inspiration from the avant-

garde.”

The antics of the Bright Young

Things would inspire several novel-

ists, including Evelyn Waugh, whose

books “Decline and Fall” and “Vile

Bodies” satirized the set. At the Na-

tional Portrait Gallery, oil portraits

of Beaton and Waugh by the painter

he inserted some micro-

scopic but still legible

anti-Semitic slurs into an

illustration for Vogue. As a

wall text in the exhibition

explains, the entire issue

was recalled, and a deeply

apologetic Beaton was

fired. “It was never going

to be something that I was

going to ignore because it

brings down the curtain

on that gilded era for

Beaton personally,” Mr.

Muir says. “For years af-

terward, he cannot understand why

he did it. There is no precedent for

what happened. But happen it did.”

The last photograph in the exhibi-

tion, showing Beaton in uniform dur-

ing World War II, hints at the next

stage of his career, when he bounced

back as a leading war photographer.

He went on to make widely admired

portraits of the British Royal Family,

as well as doing design and costume

work on Oscar-winning films such as

“Gigi” and “My Fair Lady.” He even

worked for Vogue again. But the

magic was never quite the same. FROM TOP: THE CECIL BEATON STUDIO ARCHIVE (2); NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON

Henry Lamb will eye each

other from opposing walls.

The two men were fa-

mously enemies—Beaton

wrote in his voluminous di-

aries about Waugh bullying

him at their boarding

school—but they shared

similar traits. Both came

from middle-class families

and used their artistic tal-

ents to gain access to a

higher social sphere.

Beaton’s entrėe into high

society was made possible

by the poet Edith Sitwell,

who sat for him on numerous occa-

sions—and once even lay down. In-

cluded in the exhibition is a 1926

portrait that depicts a recumbent

Sitwell as a medieval effigy, deco-

rated with lilies and attended by two

carved cherubs. The novelty of see-

ing a lady lying down in a photo-

graph didn’t please everyone. “Sheer

blasphemy!” the British socialite

Margot Asquith was heard to exclaim

when she saw the picture at Beaton’s

hot-ticket debut exhibition in 1927.

Nevertheless, Sitwell was thrilled

by the result. “All of Cecil’s subjects

bought into what he wanted and

had a great time,” Mr. Muir says.

“There is such a refreshing infor-

mality about the early photographs

he took at his parents’ home. You

don’t get that same sense of fun if

you look at the portraiture of his

contemporaries.”

Beaton’s sense of fun began to

curdle in the years leading up to

World War II. By that time he had

become one of the world’s most

highly paid photographers and a star

contributor to Vogue. It would all

come crashing down in 1938, when

REVIEW