Miller’s colourful tale

This beautiful exhibition celebrates the 100th anniversary of Lee Miller’s birth in Poughkeepsie, New York State, and it takes place 30 years after her death from cancer. When she died, her only child Antony Penrose had no idea of her achievements as muse and artist, and only learnt about them gradually. As he grew to understand her better, he determined to set about the rehabilitation of her artistic reputation. This he has achieved with exemplary thoroughness, through a series of publications and exhibitions which have made Lee Miller a well-known and much admired figure. The last substantial museum show was at the National Portrait Gallery in 2005 — is it a little soon to be having another? The argument goes that this new exhibition covers the territory more exhaustively than the NPG’s portrait-based display, and certainly the amount of publicity that has been sloshing around proves that the public’s appetite for the Lee Miller story is unappeased. Perhaps after this she’ll be allowed a bit of a rest….

The show opens with a group of photographs of Miller in her role as model, the earliest taken by her father Theodore, a serious amateur with a special interest in stereo-scopic photography, and others by leading names of the period. Condé Nast grabbed Lee when she was about to cross a busy New York street, saving her from being run over and at the same time recognising her model potential. He stuck her on the cover of Vogue in a drawing by Georges Lepape, and soon she was posing for the photographers too. There’s a soft-focus dapple-lit Arnold Genthe portrait from 1927 of Lee with short straight hair which is utterly ravishing. George Hoyningen-Huene photographed her in beguiling androgynous mode wearing sailcloth trousers. And there’s a stunning Man Ray picture of her (c.1930)