Francis Cyril Rose

*Oil on Canvas, Date unknown.*
Francis Cyril Rose
Cecil Beaton as a Young Man
Sir Francis, 4th Baronet of the Montreal Roses, writer and painter was championed by Gertrude Stein, starting his painting career as a set designer for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. He was a friend and sometime lover of Christopher Wood with whom he collaborated. Famously, Rose appears in Wood’s painting ‘Nude in a bedroom’ painted in 1930. He was a long time ‘frenemy’ of Cecil Beaton.
“I never liked him. From the first meeting I found him revolting. He is not a nice character. He does have a certain genius and a flair for beauty in its most rare forms. But I don’t know how it is that he has become for forty years my great cross.” CB
Rose painted this portrait of Beaton as well as scenes depicting Beaton’s home at Ashcombe. In his later years Rose fell on hard times, sleeping rough and relying on the help of friends. Beaton once gave him a grey suit, after which he often told people he had the same tailor as Beaton. In 1971, he rang Beaton up revealing his plans to kill himself the next day and that Beaton would be named as his heir. He lived till 1979. In 1961, he published a memoir, Saying Life and many of his artworks are now in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery.