Show celebrates legacy of the art school in Benton End—which counted Lucian Freud among its students The Art Newspaper | By Karen Chernick
"Rumour has it that a young Lucian Freud was to blame for burning down the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham, in 1939. The 17-year-old enfant terrible had apparently been careless with a cigarette in one of the studios and that was that, so the story (that he cultivated himself) goes. If Freud truly was the culprit, he may have done the art school an accidental favour since it was then forced to relocate to Benton End—a Tudor manor house in Suffolk surrounded by a three-acre garden.
This setting was a perfect home and workspace for the school’s founders, the British artists Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines, and their unique union of horticulture and art. An exhibition at London’s Garden Museum this month will explore what Morris and Lett (as he was known) made of this 16th-century home in the four decades that they lived, painted, gardened, cooked and hosted creatives there. The Garden Museum is particularly well poised to mount the show as it was handed ownership of Benton End in 2021 by the Pinchbeck Charitable Trust. The museum has since been working to turn Benton End into a cultural centre."
