Aubrey Beardsley was an English artist and writer known for his Art Nouveau pen and ink drawings, which often featured grotesque and erotic themes. He illustrated books such as Salome and Le Morte D’Arthur and worked as an art editor for The Yellow Book before starting his own publication, The Savoy. Beardsley died at the age of 25 from tuberculosis.
Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) was an English artist and writer of the Victorian period. His characteristic Art Nouveau pen and ink drawings make dramatic use of the contrast between dark and light areas. His drawings were featured in many books during his lifetime, including Oscar Wilde’s Salome, Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, and Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. His work, often grotesque and erotic, was controversial at the time and continues to be of shocking value to some to this day. Beardsley also wrote and illustrated Under the Hill, an incomplete erotic work based on the legend of Tannhauser, who according to German legend was a knight and poet who discovered the subterranean abode of the goddess Venus, and eventually split between two opposing women: Venus and “Elizabeth”.
Beardsley was born in Brighton, England on August 21, 1872, to middle-class parents who struggled to make ends meet. He had an older sister named Mabel. He has suffered from tuberculosis since the age of nine and has been ill for most of his life.
In 1884, he and his sister began living with their aunt. He started attending Bristol Grammar School shortly thereafter. After finishing school in 1889, he took a job as a clerk in a London insurance office. His mother followed him there and continued to breastfeed him throughout his life. He was not satisfied with his clerical work and sought a career in the art world. He had shown an interest in art during his Bristol days, when her short pieces of prose and poetry, as well as his illustrations, appeared in school publications. Beardsley and his sister visited the studio of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, who advised them to hone his art at Westminster School of Art.
His drawings soon became popular and he was commissioned to provide illustrations for Le Morte D’Arthur and Salome in 1983 and 1894 respectively. Publishers objected to nudity in some of his illustrations of Salome, so two versions exist of some of the drawings: the originals and the censored versions. When Wilde, the author of Salome, expressed disappointment with Beardsley’s work, he incorporated unkind caricatures of the author into his illustrations of it.
He then began working as an art editor for The Yellow Book, a decadent journal that cemented his fame. The newspaper first appeared in 1894 and worked on it for only a year. He was fired after Oscar Wilde’s arrest for “gross indecency” due to his association with the notorious author. However, he would forever remain associated with The Yellow Book in the public mind.
Beardsley’s next project was a rival publication to The Yellow Book; The Savoy, designed by publisher Leonard Smithers. He contributed both illustrations and writing to this publication and continued to work as an illustrator for Smithers after The Savoy ceased publication in 1896. Smithers also published a collection of his works entitled A Book of Fifty Drawings.
Beardsley’s life was tragically cut short at the age of 25 by tuberculosis which had plagued him since childhood. He died in Menton, France, where he had moved in an attempt to improve his health, in the early hours of March 16, 1898.
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