Within the footsteps of Lee Miller and the surrealists: a tour of her arty Sussex retreat

Tright here’s an authentic Picasso tile – of an summary face with a yellow nostril – roughly cemented into the wall above the Aga within the kitchen of Farleys Home in East Sussex. “Patsy [the housekeeper] used to clean it with Vim,” says Jenny, my information. “Lee and Roland believed artwork was to be lived with – not only for a museum.”

The pair in query are Lee Miller (American mannequin, muse, vogue photographer turned second world battle correspondent for Vogue) and her husband, Roland Penrose (surrealist painter, writer and co-founder of London’s Institute of Up to date Artwork). They moved into this home in Muddles Inexperienced, Chiddingly, with their two-year-old son Antony in 1949. From the road, the modest Queen Anne facade offers no trace of the colorful world inside.

Miller’s story is about to hit the silver display screen in September with Lee, starring and produced by Kate Winslet. A ardour undertaking of Winslet’s and 10 years within the making, it tells of a rare life – and can undoubtedly deliver extra guests to her former house.

“Kate captures the essence of Lee,” Antony tells me as we chat over tea in what was his childhood bed room. “She spent plenty of time at Farleys, conducting very immersive analysis, going by way of the archives, asking questions. She needed the movie to be genuine. It’s a movie a couple of girl made by a workforce of ladies, which was necessary too.”

Although views of the Downs had been filmed right here, a duplicate of the sitting room was created in a studio in Budapest. However “all the pieces is spot on, even the work on the partitions had been completely recreated,” says Antony.

Guests to Farleys can be part of an interesting tour and wander the sculpture gardens and gallery areas. The kitchen continues to be in its Nineteen Fifties glory – full with condiments within the cabinets. A Picasso sketch made in 1950 hangs on the wall: it’s of Grasshopper Bulls, an ink drawing impressed by the couple’s bull, William.

The eating room is painted the yellow of Farmers Weekly, to which Penrose (a “gentleman farmer”) subscribed. His brilliant mural, impressed by the Lengthy Man of Wilmington – which might be seen from the home – decorates the hearth and surrealist work hold on the partitions. A cupboard of curiosities accommodates objects starting from a Honduran pottery rooster to a mummified rat and piece by Picasso.

A small show – knuckle dusters engraved together with her title, a Rolleiflex digital camera, a US army badge – reminds us of Miller’s time on the frontline as one of many solely feminine photographers to comply with allied troops, and the Nazi horrors she witnessed. Within the ultimate room hangs an iconic picture of Miller in Hitler’s bathtub in Munich on the finish of the battle, dusty fight boots from Dachau focus camp staining the tub mat.

Rising up with Miller as a mom wasn’t straightforward, says Antony. “She was a really, very troublesome girl – wanting again, she was clearly struggling with post-traumatic stress dysfunction and self-medicating with alcohol. However after all, I didn’t perceive that as a toddler.”

What he does keep in mind is the stream of fascinating characters who got here to remain at Farleys, a lot of them pals from her time in prewar France. Picasso “smelt good and was good for cuddles”. Man Ray was “very humorous and beneficiant together with his time”. The guests’ ebook is a who’s who of the Twentieth-century artwork scene, with signatures, poems and drawings by luminaries together with surrealist poet Paul Éluard and artists Max Ernst and Joan Miró.

Miller largely deserted pictures as soon as she obtained again to the UK after the battle. “After the issues she had seen, she couldn’t return to taking pictures of frocks and hats,” says Antony. A brand new ardour supplied an outlet for her creativity – cooking, usually with a surrealist twist (feast fare is likely to be pink breasts created from cauliflower or signature verdant Muddles Inexperienced rooster).

It was solely after Antony’s late spouse, Suzanna, found 60,000 negatives and 1000’s of pages of meticulous notes within the attic after Miller’s loss of life in 1977 that he started to essentially perceive his mom. “She had stored a lot of what she’d gone by way of hidden. The lady I came upon about was so completely different from the mom I’d recognized,” he says. Years of labor cataloguing the archive and analysis adopted and fashioned the idea of his 1988 biography, The Lives of Lee Miller, which impressed the movie.

“The movie could be very sincere,” says Antony. “She doesn’t emerge as a shiny heroine however as a badly scarred particular person for whom the worth of her journalism was excessive – but she by no means anticipated any sympathy.”

In addition to the common home excursions, Farleys gives longer, non-public excursions with a member of the Penrose household, with the choice of studying extra concerning the huge archive of pictures and manuscripts (Antony’s granddaughter Ami Bouhassane is co-director of the home and archives). There are two galleries, too. The smaller, in a former barn, has a restaurant and revolving exhibitions of up to date artists, in addition to one about the home to have a good time the seventy fifth anniversary of the household shifting in.

The bigger gallery, opened in 2020 in a transformed cattle barn, at present hosts an exhibition of Miller’s work in England throughout the blitz – together with vogue shoots for Vogue set towards bombed-out London – and Antony’s personal unbelievable three-and-a-half 12 months journey world wide in a Land Rover within the Nineteen Seventies (that’s one other story and topic of a memoir in progress).

Later this summer season, there will probably be an exhibition of stills from the brand new movie, twinned with the unique pictures that impressed the scenes.

There’s a programme of workshops and occasions, too, and every August a surrealist picnic takes place within the grounds. I stroll the gardens, that are dotted with intriguing sculptures (together with Antony’s oak and lead Sea Creature and Fallen Big by Michael Werner) and picture the colorful individuals who have been right here earlier than.

“The surrealists had been all about difficult conference,” says Antony. “Folks, notably younger girls, usually inform me that Lee’s story impressed them to vary one thing of their lives. I like that – and Lee would have, too.”

This space of East Sussex appealed to Miller and Penrose due to the attractive panorama and its proximity to London and France (the Newhaven to Dieppe ferry is shut by). It was house to a different unconventional inventive family at Charleston, which Penrose had visited too. The house of the Bloomsbury set – with modernist painters Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and David Garnett’s menage à trois at its coronary heart – was a gathering level for among the Twentieth century’s most radical artists, writers and thinkers.

“It was really [art critic and artist] Roger Fry, who was concerned with the Bloomsbury set, who instructed my father go to Paris and develop into an artist after Cambridge,” says Antony. “That was the start of Roland’s involvement with the surrealists.”

It’s only a 15-minute drive to Charleston from Farleys. The entire place is a murals; virtually each floor is painted. There are guided excursions, however most visits are self-guided, with workers readily available to supply insights into the seductive characters who lived and labored right here. “Isn’t it nice to be shocked by the lives of individuals from 100 years in the past?” says the girl on the door as I go away.

The place to remain

Between Farleys and Charleston on the Firle property, close to Lewes, the just lately opened Shepherd’s Cottage makes a becoming base. The secluded cottage dates from the late 18th century. Hand-painted stencilling decorates the 2 bed room partitions and there’s specifically printed hemp wallpaper, with scenes of barns and buildings from the property, within the sitting room. The skilled renovation used authentic bricks and conventional supplies (the kitchen ground is lime and ash combine, not concrete, for instance). It looks like a really comfy and charming (TV-free!) time capsule, with memorabilia from the Nineteen Thirties and 40s.

Charleston is only a stroll away, whereas Firle is 40 minutes by foot alongside nation lanes. (I head to the Ram Inn for dinner and stroll again below the celebs.) Firle Place itself homes a exceptional collections of outdated masters. For extra artwork, Charleston just lately opened a new exhibition space in Lewes.

This space of Sussex has no scarcity of sensible walks – the cottage is on an historical byway between Firle and Alfriston, and the South Downs Means is on the doorstep. A little bit additional away is Berwick, its fairly church vividly embellished by the Bloomsbury set, and the Lengthy Man of Wilmington. Cease in on the church in Wilmington village to see the spectacular historical yew too.

Farleys House and Gallery is open Thursday, Friday and Sunday from April-31 October (entrance £10 or £23 with tour). Shepherd’s Cottage, sleeps 4, from £179 an evening, three-night minimal. With because of Sussex Modern. Lee is in UK and Irish cinemas from 13 September.