The Climax (illustration). Aubrey Beardsley · Public domain · source

Aubrey Beardsley

Public domain1872-1898·English·illustration·Wikipedia ↗

Who

English illustrator of the 1890s, working in black ink and blank white paper, with a style built from Japanese prints and Burne-Jones and a taste for the grotesque. Died of tuberculosis at 25, having produced his whole body of work in about six years.

Why they matter

He proved that a line-block illustration for cheap mass printing could be a major work of art, and his black-and-white abstraction of the figure feeds directly into poster design, Art Nouveau and, a lifetime later, 1960s psychedelic graphics.

What to buy

Originals: the drawings are in museums. What can be owned is the printed work as issued: copies of The Yellow Book, the Savoy, and the 1894 Salome and 1890s Dent Morte d'Arthur in period editions, all of which turn up on eBay and AbeBooks for tens to hundreds of dollars. These are the intended form of the work, since the drawings were made for the block. Books: the Dover collections reproduce the drawings cheaply; the Tate's 2020 catalogue is the current study.

Notes

The V&A holds the largest collection of his drawings, including the Salome series.

Key works

Illustrations for Salome (1894) - for Oscar Wilde's play
Le Morte d'Arthur (1893-1894) - over 350 designs for J. M. Dent
The Yellow Book (1894-1895) - art editor, first four volumes
The Peacock Skirt (1893)

Aubrey Beardsley

Who

Why they matter

What to buy

Notes

Key works

In museum collections

See the work

Prints

Books

Originals

See also