Cecil Beaton's Garden Party at the Garden Museum

With a moody, romantic style ripped straight from the opera stage, Beaton’s status as something of a Renaissance man—counting roles as an interior designer, war photographer, and painter amongst others—spreads like roots through the collective consciousness of British design. 

Now, the Garden Museum invites its visitors to tumble through a proverbial rabbit hole into the artist’s creative world. The latest exhibit ‘Cecil Beaton’s Garden Party’ is host to the common thread that runs thickly through his work – that of nature itself.

Like his portrait of the late Queen, Beaton's floral surroundings provide fresh insight into the artist’s process. Beaton held similar standards for his use of flowers as he did for his own varied and experimental practice—blooms come in many different forms across his work, whether painted onto backdrops, grouped into lavish bouquets, or suggested by the ruffles on a dress. Here, they’re often larger than your head, albeit sketched out in monochrome across sweet peach walls.

Flowers, to Beaton, seem as much the invention of dreams as they are grounded in the chalky earth of his time spent in Wiltshire. The similarly fantastical exhibition explores the artist’s time spent at Ashcombe House and Reddish House, combining his professional costume illustrations with personal diaries and photographs from intimate gatherings of friends and family. 

Beaton’s star-power—particularly in the collection of My Fair Lady memorabilia—is surely a large draw for exhibition goers. Picture postcards and framed posters turn the exhibition’s walls into a shrine reminiscent of a teenager’s bedroom—likewise, photographs of his ‘Fête Champêtre’ costume party held in 1937 and attended by 300 guests, including several of the ‘Bright Young Things’ are worthy of an adolescent fantasy. 

But it’s not just dreams on offer: the product of his long-term collaboration with Frederick Ashton, Founder Choreographer of The Royal Ballet, are also on display. As well as his original costume designs for Ashton’s ballets Les Sirènes and Apparitions, Beaton’s set designs for the opera Turandot will be available to see in both sketch and model form, loaned to the Garden Museum by the Royal Opera House.

Better still, his portraits of Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret show his ability to write a fairytale in a single image. Best known as a photographer, Beaton’s floral scenes were intended to refresh and empower the public image of the monarchy – and now, in turn, establish him as an inimitable force in the evolution of photography. It’s hard not to feel drawn into the artist’s constructed fairytale when tall shrubs and briars sit between the viewer and subject. Courtesy of Beaton, we become the rejected prince gazing up through his eyes at Sleeping Beauty’s tower—even as we imagine ourselves the queen at the centre of the artist’s sharp focus. 

The Garden Museum seems wholly aware that it is Beaton’s dreams we’ve come to see. But where their curation gets playful, it’s consistently appropriate to a retrospective of the photographer’s work. Tin foil backdrops, suspended wicker baskets, and walls decorated with darkly bruising flowers, emphasise Beaton’s own flair for the dramatic even in the natural world.

An arched array of fake flowers and a curving glass display echo the sentimental nature of the exhibition’s contents, while even a standing table is partially hidden by trailing roses on a soft cotton skirt. But the exhibit’s emotive and subtly theatrical treatment doesn’t distract from its contents; instead, it seems rather a fitting stage on which Beaton’s work can be appreciated.

The Garden Museum has dipped into the ready palette of fantasy that Beaton provides and splashed it onto its own walls, just as he drew from the offerings of his own garden to carve out a world of fantasy. Make sure you stop and smell the roses.

Cecil Beaton’s Garden Party is exhibited at the Garden Museum until 21 September 2025

Tickets start at £8 and are free for children under six or members of the Garden Museum. Purchase your tickets here.