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Title: Aubrey Beardsley
Author: Ross, Robert, 1869-1918
Language: English
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AUBREY BEARDSLEY
[Illustration: MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL
_Now in the Berlin National Gallery_]
[Illustration]
AUBREY BEARDSLEY
BY ROBERT ROSS
WITH SIXTEEN FULL-PAGE
ILLUSTRATIONS AND A
REVISED ICONOGRAPHY
BY AYMER VALLANCE
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMIX
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
TO
Sir COLERIDGE ARTHUR FITZROY KENNARD,
Bart.
Illustrations
MRS PATRICK CAMPBELL _Frontispiece_
_Now in the Berlin National Gallery_
_facing page_
SIEGFRIED 12
_Reproduced from the original in the possession of
Mrs Bealby Wright_
THE WOMAN IN THE MOON 14
_From "Salome"_
THE TOILETTE OF SALOME 18
_From "Salome"_
THE DANCER'S REWARD 20
_From "Salome"_
TAILPIECE 22
_From "Salome"_
DESIGN FOR A FRONTISPIECE 26
_From "Plays" by John Davidson_
THE WAGNERITES 28
ATALANTA 32
THE MYSTERIOUS ROSE GARDEN 36
ILLUSTRATION FOR "A NOCTURNE OF CHOPIN" 38
CHOPIN, BALLADE III. OP. 47 42
THE BARON'S PRAYER 44
_From "The Rape of the Lock"_
THE BATTLE OF BEAUX AND BELLES 48
_From "The Rape of the Lock"_
A DESIGN FROM "LYSISTRATA" 50
D'ALBERT IN SEARCH OF IDEALS 54
_From "Mademoiselle de Maupin." Reproduced from the
original in the possession of Mrs Bealby Wright_
AUBREY BEARDSLEY
Aubrey Beardsley was born on August 21st, 1872, at Brighton. He was a
quiet, reserved child, caring little for lessons, though from an early
age he shewed an aptitude for drawing. He began his education at a
Kindergarten. He was seven years old when the first symptoms of delicacy
appeared, and he was sent to a preparatory school at Hurstpierpoint,
where he was remarkable for his courage and extreme reserve. Threatened
with tuberculosis, he was moved for his health to Epsom in 1881. In
March 1883 his family settled in London, and Beardsley made his first
public appearance as an infant musical phenomenon, playing at concerts
in company with his sister. He had a great knowledge of music, and
always spoke dogmatically on a subject, the only one he used to say, of
which he knew anything. He became attracted at this time by Miss Kate
Greenaway's picture books, and started illuminating menus and invitation
cards with coloured chalks, making by this means quite considerable sums
for a child.
In August 1884 he and his sister were sent back to Brighton, where
they resided with an old aunt. Their lives were lonely, and Beardsley
developed a taste for reading of a rather serious kind--the histories
of Freeman and Greene being his favourite works. He could not remain
a student without creating, so he started a history of the Armada! In
November of the same year he was sent to the Brighton Grammar School as
a day boy, becoming a boarder in January 1885. He was a great favourite
with Mr King, the house-master, who encouraged his tastes for reading
and drawing by giving him the use of a sitting-room and the run of
a library. This was one of the first pieces of luck that attended
Beardsley throughout life. The head-master, Mr Marshall, I am told,
would hold him up as an example to the other boys, on account of his
industry. His caricatures of the masters were fully appreciated by
them, a rare occurrence in the lives of artists. He cultivated besides
a talent for acting, and would often perform before large audiences at
the Pavilion. He organized weekly performances at the school, designing
and illustrating the programmes. He even wrote a farce called "A Brown
Study," which was played at Brighton, where it received serious
attention from the dramatic critics of the town. He would purchase
each volume of the Mermaid series of Elizabethan dramatists then being
issued, and with his sister gave performances during the holidays. From
the record of the "Brighton College Magazine," Beardsley appears to have
taken a leading rôle in all histrionic fêtes, and to "The Pied Piper of
Hamelin" he contributed some delightful and racy little sketches, the
first of his drawings, I believe, that were ever reproduced.
[Illustration: SIEGFRIED
_Reproduced from the original in the possession of Mrs. Bealby Wright_]
In July 1888 he left school, and almost immediately entered an
architect's office in London. In 1889 he obtained a post in the Guardian
Life and Fire Insurance. During the autumn of that year the fatal
hæmorrhages commenced; for two years he gave up his amateur theatricals
and did little in the way of drawing. In 1891, however, he recuperated;
a belief in his own powers revived. He now commenced a whole series
of illustrations to various plays, such as Marlowe's "Tamerlane,"
Congreve's "Way of the World," and various French works which he was
able to enjoy in the original. He would often speak of the encouragement
and kindness he received at this period from the Rev. Alfred Gurney, who
had known his family at Brighton, and who was perhaps the earliest of
his friends to realize that Beardsley possessed something more than mere
cleverness or precocity.
Several people have claimed to discover Aubrey Beardsley, but I think it
truer to say that he revealed himself, when proper acknowledgment has
been made to Mr Aymer Vallance, Mr Joseph Pennell, Mr Frederick Evans,
Mr J. M. Dent, and Mr John Lane, with whom Beardsley's art will always be
associated in connection with the Yellow Book, that too early daffodil
that came before the swallow dared and could not take the winds of March
for beauty. To Mr Pennell belongs the credit of introducing Beardsley's
art to the public; and to Mr Dent is due the rare distinction of giving
him practical encouragement, by commissioning the illustrations to the
"Morte d'Arthur," long before critics had written anything about him,
or any but a few friends knew of his great powers. Beardsley was too
remarkable a personality to remain in obscurity. Though I remember
with some amusement how the editor of a well-known weekly mocked at a
prophecy that the artist was a coming man who would very shortly excite
discussion if not admiration. Fortunately Mr Pennell, a distinguished
artist himself, and a fearless critic, not only espoused the cause of
the new draughtsman, but became a personal friend for whom Beardsley
always evinced great affection, and to whom he dedicated his "Album of
Fifty Drawings."
[Illustration: THE WOMAN IN THE MOON
_From "Salome"_]
I shall never forget my first meeting with Aubrey Beardsley, on February
14th, 1892, at the rooms of Mr Vallance, the well-known disciple and
biographer of William Morris. Though prepared for an extraordinary
personality, I never expected the youthful apparition which glided into
the room. He was shy, nervous, and self-conscious, without any of the
intellectual assurance and ease so characteristic of him eighteen months
later when his success was unquestioned. He brought a portfolio of his
marvellous drawings, in themselves an earnest of genius; but I hardly
paid any attention to them at first, so overshadowed were they by the
strange and fascinating originality of their author. In two hours it was
not hard to discover that Beardsley's appearance did not belie him. He
was an intellectual Marcellus suddenly matured. His rather long brown
hair, instead of being "ébouriffé," as the ordinary genius is expected
to wear it, was brushed smoothly and flatly on his head and over part
of his immensely high and narrow brow. His face even then was terribly
drawn and emaciated. Except in his manner, I do not think his general
appearance altered very much in spite of the ill-health and suffering,
borne with such unparalleled resignation and fortitude: he always had
a most delightful and engaging smile both for friends and strangers.
He grew less shy after half an hour, becoming gayer and more talkative.
He was full of Molière and "Manon Lescaut" at the time; he seemed
disappointed that none of us was musical; but he astonished by his
knowledge of Balzac an authority on the subject who was also present.
He spoke much of the National Gallery and the British Museum, both of
which he knew with extraordinary thoroughness. He told me he had only
been once to the New Gallery, where he saw some pictures by Burne-Jones,
but had never been to the Royal Academy. As far as I know, he never
visited the spring shows of Burlington House. He always, however,
defended that institution with enthusiasm, saying he would rather be an
Academician than an artist, "as it takes only one man to make an artist,
but forty to make an Academician."
Our next meeting was a few weeks later, when he brought me a replica of
his "_Joan of Arc_." I was anxious to buy the first and better version,
now in the possession of Mr Frederick Evans, but he refused to part with
it at the time. He seemed particularly proud of the drawing; it was the
only work of this period he would allow to have any merit.
In the early summer of 1892 he visited Burne-Jones and Watts, receiving
from the former artist cordial recognition and excellent advice which
proved invaluable to him. He attributed to the same great painter the
criticism that "he had learnt too much from the old masters and would
benefit by the training of an art school." A few days afterwards he
produced a most amusing caricature of himself being kicked down the
stairs of the National Gallery by Raphael, Titian, and Mantegna, whilst
Michael Angelo dealt a blow on his head with a hammer. This entertaining
little record, I am sorry to say, was destroyed. Beardsley was always
sensible about friendly and intelligent criticism. When he reached a
position enjoyed by no artist of his own age, he was swift to remedy
any defect pointed out to him by artists or even by ordinary friends.
I never met anyone so receptive on all subjects; he would record what
Mr Pennell or Puvis de Chavannes said in praise or blame of a particular
drawing with equal candour and good humour. This was only one of his
many amiable qualities. When he afterwards became a sort of household
word and his fame, or notoriety as his enemies called it, was
established, he never changed in this respect. He made friends and
remained friends with many for whom his art was totally unintelligible.
Social charm triumphed over all differences. He would speak with
enthusiasm about writers and artists quite out of sympathy with his
own aims and aspirations. He never assumed that those to whom he was
introduced either knew or admired his work. His character was brisk
and virile to an extraordinary degree. He made enemies, I believe,
by refusing to revolve in mutual admiration societies or to support
literary and artistic cliques. With the shadow of death always over
him and conscious of the brief time before him, he never gave himself
up to morbid despair or useless complaints. He determined to enjoy life,
and, equipped with all the curiosity and gaiety of boyhood, he caught
at life's exquisite moments. There was always a very deep and sincere
religious vein in his temperament, only noticeable to very intimate
friends. With all his power of grasping the essential and absorbing
knowledge, he remained charmingly unsophisticated. He took people as
they came, never discriminating, perhaps, sufficiently the issues of
life. He was unspoiled by success, unburdened with worldly wisdom.
He was generous to a fault, spending his money lavishly on his friends
to an extent that became almost embarrassing.
[Illustration: THE TOILETTE OF SALOME
_From "Salome"_]
His love and knowledge of books increased rather than diminished even
after he devoted himself entirely to art. In early days he would
exchange his drawings for illustrated books and critical texts of the
English classics with Mr Frederick Evans, an early and enthusiastic
buyer of his work. His tastes were not narrow. Poetry, memoirs, history,
short stories, biography, and essays of all kinds appealed to him; but
he cared little for novels, except in French. I don't think he ever
read Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot, though he enjoyed Scott
during the last months of his life. He had an early predilection for
lives of the Saints. The scrap-book of sketches, containing drawings
done prior to 1892, indicates the range and extent of his taste. There
are illustrations to "Manon Lescaut," "Tartarin," "Madame Bovary,"
Balzac ("Le Cousin Pons," the "Contes Drôlatiques"), Racine, Shelley's
"Cenci." He retained his love of the drama, and began to write a play in
collaboration with Mr Brandon Thomas. While dominated by pre-Raphaelite
influences, he read with great avidity "Sidonia the Sorceress," and "The
Shaving of Shagpat," a favourite book of Rossetti's; and it was with a
view to illustrate Mr Meredith's Arabian Night that he became introduced
to Mr John Lane, who divides with Mr Herbert Pollit the honour of
possessing the finest Beardsleys still in this country. He read Greek
and Latin authors in translations, and often astonished scholars by his
acute appreciation of their matter. He approached Dantesque mediævalism
through Rossetti and, later on, at the original source. Much of his
early work illustrated incidents in the "Divine Comedy." He was a
fervent admirer of the "Romance of the Rose" in the original, and
several mediæval French books, but he once told me that he found the
"Morte d'Arthur" very long-winded.
[Illustration: THE DANCER'S REWARD
_From "Salome"_]
For one so romantic in the expression of his art, I should say his
literary and artistic tastes were severely classic, though you would
have expected them to be bizarre. He was ambitious of literary success,
but any aspirations were wisely discouraged by his admirers. His
writings, however brilliant--and they often were brilliant--shewed a
dangerous cleverness, which on cultivation might have proved disastrous
to the realization of his true genius. "Under the Hill" is a delightful
experiment in a rococo style of literature, and it would be difficult to
praise sufficiently the rhythm and metrical adroitness of the two poems
in the Savoy Magazine. Though I cannot speak of his musical attainments,
it may be regarded as fortunate that so remarkable a genius was directed
to a more permanent form of executive power.
His knowledge of life, art, and literature seemed the result of instinct
rather than study; for no one has ever discovered where he found the
time or opportunity for assimilating all he did. Gregarious and sociable
by nature, he was amusingly secretive about his methods and times of
work. Like other industrious men, he never pretended to be busy or
pressed for time. He never denied his door to callers, nor refused to
go anywhere on the plea of "work."
He disliked anyone being in the room when he was drawing, and hastily
hid all his materials if a stranger entered the room. He would rarely
exhibit an unfinished sketch, and carefully destroyed any he was not
thoroughly satisfied with himself. He carried this sensitive spirit
of selection and self-criticism rather far. Calling on friends who
possessed primitives, he would destroy these early relics and leave a
more mature and approved specimen of his art, or the _édition de luxe_
of some book he had illustrated. Some of us were so annoyed that we were
eventually obliged to lock up all early examples. For though friends
thus victimized were endowed with a more valuable acquisition, they had
a natural sentiment and affection for the unsophisticated designs of
his earlier years.
[Illustration: TAILPIECE
_From "Salome"_]
His life, though many-sided and successful, was outwardly uneventful.
In the early summer of 1892 he entered Professor Brown's night school
at Westminster, but during the day continued his work at the Guardian
Fire Insurance until August, when, by his sister's advice, he resigned
his post. In December he acquainted with Mr Pennell, from whose
encouragement and advice he reaped the fullest advantage. After
commencing the decorations to the "Morte d'Arthur," he ceased to attend
Professor Brown's classes. In February 1893 some of his drawings were
first published in London in the Pall Mall Budget under the editorship
of Mr Lewis Hind, but one of the most striking of his early designs
appeared in a little college magazine entitled The Bee. When The Studio
was started by Mr Charles Holme under the able direction of the late
Gleeson-White, Beardsley designed the first cover and Mr Pennell
contributed the well-known appreciation of the new artist.
Towards the end of 1893 he commenced working for Mr John Lane, who
issued his marvellous illustrations to "Salomé" in 1894. In April of the
same year appeared the Yellow Book. To the first four volumes Beardsley
contributed altogether about eighteen illustrations. From a pictorial
point of view this publication had no other _raison d'être_ than as a
vehicle for the production of Beardsley's work, though Henry Harland,
in his capacity as literary editor, revealed the presence of many new
writers among us. Throughout 1894 Beardsley's health seemed to improve,
and his social success was considerable. In the previous year he had
been ridiculed, but now the world accepted him at Mr Pennell's
valuation. The Beardsley type became quite a fashion, and was burlesqued
at many of the theatres; his name and work were on everyone's lips. He
made friends with many of his contemporaries distinguished in art and
literature. At the house of one of his friends he delivered a very
amusing lecture on "Art" which created much discussion.
A little later Beardsley was popularly supposed to have given pictorial
expression to the views and sentiments of a certain school, and his
drawings were regarded as the outward artistic sign of inward literary
corruption. This is not the place to discuss the invention of a mare's
nest. He suffered considerably by this premature attempt to classify his
art. Further efforts to ridicule his work and suppress its publication
were, however, among the most cheering failures of modern journalism.
In 1895 he ceased to contribute to the Yellow Book, and in January 1896
The Savoy was started by Leonard Smithers, with Mr Arthur Symons as the
literary editor, who became the most subtle and discerning of all his
critics after Beardsley's death. Failing health was the only difficulty
with which he had to contend in the future. From March 1896, when he
caught a severe chill at Brussels, he became a permanent invalid. He
returned to England in May, and in August went to Bournemouth, where
he spent the autumn and winter.
Those who visited him at Bournemouth never expected he would live for
more than a few weeks. His courage, however, never failed him, and
he continued work even while suffering from lung hæmorrhage; but he
expressed a hope and belief, in which he was justified, that he might
be spared one more year. On March 31st, 1897, he was received into the
Catholic Church. The sincerity of his religious convictions has been
affirmed by those who were with him constantly; and, as I have suggested
before, the flippancy and careless nature of his conversation were
superficial: he was always strict in his religious observances. Among
his intimate friends through life were clergymen and priests who have
paid tribute to the reality and sincerity of his belief.
A week after being received, Beardsley rallied again, and moved to
Paris, but still required the attention and untiring devotion of his
mother, to whom he was deeply attached. He never returned to England
again. From time to time he was cheered by visits from Miss Mabel
Beardsley (Mrs Bealby Wright), who understood her brother as few sisters
have done. For some time he stayed at St Germain, and in July 1897 he
went to Dieppe, where he seemed almost to have recovered. It was only,
however, for a short time, and in the end of 1897 he was hurried to
Mentone. He never left his room after January 25th. The accounts of him
which reached London prepared his friends for the end. Almost one of his
last letters was to Mr Vincent O'Sullivan, the poet, congratulating him
on his Introduction to "Volpone," for which Beardsley was making the
illustrations. Beardsley had a considerable knowledge and appreciation
of Ben Jonson.
[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE
_From "Plays" by John Davidson_]
On March 23rd, 1898, he received the last sacraments; and on the 25th,
with perfect resignation, in the presence of his mother and sister, to
whom he had confided messages of love and sympathy to his many friends,
Aubrey Beardsley passed away.
"Come back in sleep, for in the life
Where thou art not
We find none like thee. Time and strife
And the world's lot
Move thee no more: but love at least
And reverent heart
May move thee, royal and released
Soul, as thou art."
No one could have wished him to live on in pain and suffering. I think
the only trials of his life were the periods in which he was unfitted
for work. His remarkable career was not darkened by any struggle for
recognition. Few artists have been so fortunate as Aubrey Beardsley.
His short life was remarkably happy--at all events during the six years
he was before the public. Everything he did met with success--a success
thoroughly enjoyed by him. He seemed indifferent to the idle criticism
and violent denunciation with which much of his art was hailed. I never
heard of anyone of importance who disliked him personally; on the other
hand, many who were hostile and prejudiced about his art ceased to
attack him after meeting him. This must have been due to the magnetism
and charm of his individuality, exercised quite unconsciously, for he
never tried to conciliate people, or "to work the oracle," but rather
gloried in shocking "the enemy," a boyish failing for which he may be
forgiven.
[Illustration: THE WAGNERITES]
He had considerable intellectual vanity, but it never relapsed into
common conceit. He was generous in recognizing the talent and genius of
others, but was singularly perverse in some of his utterances. He said
once that only four of his contemporaries interested him. He bore with
extraordinary patience the assertions of foolish persons who calmly
asserted that both in America and England other artists had anticipated
the peculiarities of his style and methods. I have seen the works of
these Lambert Simnels and Perkin Warbecks, and they proved, one and all,
crows in peacocks' feathers. Beardsley's style, nevertheless, influenced
(unfortunately, I think) many excellent artists both younger and older
than himself. In France his work was accepted without question: he was
always gratified by the cordiality which greeted him in a country where
he was more generally understood than in his own. He has illustrious
precedents in Constable and Bonnington. Italy, Austria, and Germany
recognized in him a master some time before his death. At Berlin his
picture of _Mrs Patrick Campbell_, the actress, is now in a place of
honour in the Museum. A portrait study of himself is in the British
Museum Print Room; a few examples are at South Kensington; but all his
important work is in private collections; much of it is in America and
Germany. In England, putting aside the notoriety and sensation caused
by his posters and the Yellow Book, appreciation of his work has been
confined rather to the few. He enjoyed, however, the friendship and
intimacy of great numbers of people, shewing that his amiable qualities,
no less than his art, received due recognition. His conversation was
vehement and witty rather than humorous. He had a remarkable talent for
mimicking, very rarely exercised. He loved argument, and supported
theories for the sake of argument in the most convincing manner, leaving
strangers with a totally wrong impression about himself, a deception to
which he was much addicted. He possessed what is called an artificial
manner, cultivated to an extent that might be mistaken for affectation.
He never could sit still for very long, and he made use of gesture for
emphasis. His peculiar gait has been very happily rendered in a portrait
of him by Mr Walter Sickert; he also sat to M. Blanche, the well-known
French portrait painter; the portrait by himself is tinged with
caricature.
* * * * *
To estimate the art of Aubrey Beardsley is not difficult. That his
drawings must excite discussion at all times is only a proof of their
lasting worth. They can never be dismissed with unkindly comment, nor
shelved into the limbo of art criticism which waits for many blameless
and depressing productions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Among artists and men of letters no less than with that great inartistic
body, "the art-loving public," Aubrey Beardsley's name will always call
forth wonder, admiration, speculation, and contempt. It should be
conceded, however, that his work cannot appeal to everyone; and that
many who have the highest perception of the beautiful see only the
repulsive and unwholesome in the troubled, exotic expression of his
genius. Fortunately, no reputation in art or letters rests on the
verdict of majorities--it is the opinion of the few which finally
triumphs. Artists and critics have already dwelt on the beauty of Aubrey
Beardsley's line, which in his early work too often resolved itself into
mere caligraphy; but the mature and perfect illustrations to "Salomé"
and "The Rape of the Lock" evince a mastery unsurpassed by any artist in
any age or country. No one ever carried a simple line to its inevitable
end with such sureness and firmness of purpose. And this is one of
the lessons which even an accomplished draughtsman may learn from
his drawings, in any age when scraggy execution masquerades under
impressionism. Aubrey Beardsley did not shirk a difficulty by leaving
lines to the imagination of critics, who might enlarge on the reticence
of his medium. Art cant and studio jargon do not explain his work. It
is really only the presence or absence of beauty in his drawing, and
his wonderful powers of technique which need trouble his admirers or
detractors. Nor are we confronted with any conjecture as to what Aubrey
Beardsley might have done--he has left a series of achievements. While
his early death caused deep sorrow among his personal friends, there
need be no sorrow for an "inheritor of unfulfilled renown." Old age
is no more a necessary complement to the realization of genius than
premature death. Within six years, after passing through all the
imitative stages of probation, he produced masterpieces he might have
repeated but never surpassed. His style would have changed. He was
too receptive and too restless to acquiesce in a single convention.
[Illustration: ATALANTA]
This is hardly the place to dwell on the great strides which black and
white art made in the nineteenth century. It has been called the most
modern of the arts; for the most finished drawings of the old masters
were done with a view to serve as studies or designs to be transferred
to canvas, metal, and wood, not for frames at an expensive dealer's.
Vittore Pisano and Gentile Bellini would hardly have dared to mount
their delightful studies and offer them as pictures to the critics
and patrons of their day. At all events it were safer to say, that
appreciation of a drawing for itself, without relation to the book or
page it was intended to adorn or destroy, is comparatively modern. It is
necessary to keep this in mind, because the suitability of Beardsley's
work to the books he embellished was often accidental. His designs
must be judged independently, as they were conceived, without any view
of interpreting or even illustrating a particular author. He was too
subjective to be a mere illustrator. Profoundly interested in literature
for the purposes of his art, he only extracted from it whatever was
suggestive as pattern; he never professed to interpret for dull people,
unable to understand what they read, any more than the mediæval
illuminator and carver of grotesques attempted to explain the mysteries
of the Christian faith on the borders of missals and breviaries or
the miserere seats of the choir. His art was, of course, intensely
_literary_, to use the word hated of modern critics, but his expression
of it was the legitimate literature of the artist, not the art peculiar
to literature. He did not attempt, or certainly never succeeded in
giving, pictorial revision to a work of literature in the sense that
Blake has done for the book of Job, and Botticelli for the "Divine
Comedy." While hardly satisfying those for whom any work of art guilty
of "subject" becomes worthless, this immunity from the conventions of
the illustrator will secure for Beardsley a larger share of esteem among
artists pure and simple than has ever fallen to William Blake, who
appeals more to men of letters than to the artist or virtuoso. The
uncritical profess to find many terrible meanings in Aubrey Beardsley's
drawings; and he will probably never be freed from the charge of
symbolism. However morbid the sentiment in some of his work, and often
there was a _macabre_, an unholy insistence on the less beautiful side
of human things, the cabala of the symbolists was a sealed book to
him. Such things were entirely foreign to his lucid and vigorous
intelligence. There is hardly a drawing of his that does not explain
itself; the commentator will search in vain for any hieroglyphic or
symbolic intention. The hieratic archaism of his early work misled many
people, for whom pre-Raphaelitism means presupposition. Of mysticism,
that stumbling-block, he had none at all. "_The Initiation of a Neophyte
into the Black Art_" would seem to contradict such a statement. The
fantasy and grotesqueness of that lurid and haunting composition have
nothing in common with the symbolism of black magic, the ritual of
freemasonry, or all the fascinating magic to be found in the works of
Eliphaz Levi. The sumptuous accessories in which he revelled had no
other than a decorative intention, giving sometimes balance to a
drawing, or conveying a literary suggestion necessary for its
interpretation.
Artists are blamed for what they have not tried to do; or for the
absence of qualities distinguishing the work of an entirely different
order of intellect; for their indifference to the observations of
_others_. As who should ask from Reynolds a faithful reproduction of
textile fabrics; and from Carlo Crivelli the natural phenomena of nature
we expect from Turner and Constable? For nature as it should be, in
the works of Corot and Turner; for nature made easy, in modern English
landscape; for nature without tears, in the impressionist fashion, or as
popularly viewed through the camera, Aubrey Beardsley had no feeling. He
was frankly indifferent to picturesque peasants, the beauties of "lovely
spots," either in England or France. A devout Catholic, the ringing of
the Angelus did not lure him to present fields of mangel-wurzels in an
evening haze. The treatment of nature in the larger and truer sense of
the word had little attraction for him; he never tried, therefore, to
represent air, atmosphere, and light, as many clever modern artists have
done in black and white! Though Claude, that master of light and shadow,
was a landscape painter who really interested him. Beardsley's
landscape, therefore, is formal, primitive, conventional; a breath of
air hardly shakes the delicate leaves of the straight poplars and
willows that grow by his serpentine streams. The great cliffs, leaning
down in promontories to the sea, have that unreal, architectural
appearance so remarkable in the West of Cornwall, a place he had never
visited. Yet his love and observation of flowers, trees, and gardens
are very striking in the drawings for the "Morte d'Arthur" and the
Savoy Magazine, but it is the nature of the landscape gardener,
not the landscape painter. There is some truth in the half-playful,
half-unfriendly criticism, that his pictures were a form of romantic
map-making. Future experts, however, may be trusted to deal with
absence of chiaroscuro, values, tones, and the rest. In only one of his
drawings, conceived, curiously enough, in the manner of Burne-Jones (an
unlikely model), is there anything approaching what is usually termed
atmosphere. Eliminating, therefore, all that must not be expected from
his art--mere illustration, realism, symbolism and naturalism--in what,
may be asked, does his supreme achievement consist? He has decorated
white sheets of paper as they have never been decorated before; whether
hung on the wall, reproduced in a book, or concealed in a museum, they
remain among the most precious and exquisite works in the art of the
nineteenth century, resembling the designs of William Blake only--in
that they must be hated, misunderstood, and neglected, ere they are
recognized as works of a master. With more simple materials than those
employed by the fathers of black and white art, Beardsley has left
memorials no less wonderful than those of the Greek vase-painters, so
highly prized by artists and archæologists alike, but no less difficult
for the uninitiated to appreciate and understand.
[Illustration: THE MYSTERIOUS ROSE GARDEN]
The astonishing fertility of his invention, and the amount of work he
managed to produce, were inconceivable; yet there is never any sign of
hurry: there is no scamping in his deft and tidy drawing. The neatness
of his most elaborate designs would suggest many sketches worked over
and discarded before deciding on the final form and composition. Strange
to say, this was not his method. He sketched everything in pencil, at
first covering the paper with apparent scrawls, constantly rubbed out
and blocked in again, until the whole surface became raddled from
pencil, indiarubber, and knife; over this incoherent surface he worked
in Chinese ink with a gold pen, often ignoring the pencil lines,
afterwards carefully removed. So every drawing was invented, built up,
and completed on the same sheet of paper. And the same process was
repeated even when he produced replicas. At first he was indifferent to
process reproduction, but, owing to Mr Pennell's influence, he later on
always worked with that end in view; thereby losing, some will think,
his independence. But he had nothing to complain of--Mr Pennell's
contention about process was never so well proved as in Beardsley's
case. His experiments in colour were not always successful, two of
his most delightful designs he ruined by tinting. In the posters and
Studio lithograph, however, the crude colour is highly effective, and
"_Mademoiselle de Maupin_" shewed he might have mastered water-colour
had he chosen to do so. There are at present in the market many coloured
forgeries of his work: these have been contrived by tracing or copying
the reproductions; the colour is often used to conceal the paucity of
the drawing and hesitancy of line; they are nearly always versions of
well-known designs, and profess to be replicas. When there _is_ any
doubt the history and provenance of the work should be carefully
studied. It is not difficult to trace the pedigree of any _genuine_
example.
[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE
_From "A Nocturne of Chopin"_]
A good deal has been made out of Beardsley's love of dark rooms and lamp
light, but this has been grossly exaggerated. He had no great faith in
north lights and studio paraphernalia, so necessary for those who use
mediums other than his own. He would sometimes draw on a perfectly flat
table, facing the light, which would fall directly on the paper, the
blind slightly lowered.
The sources of Beardsley's inspiration have led critics into grievous
errors. He was accused of imitating artists, some of whose work he had
never seen, and of whose names he was ignorant at the time the alleged
plagiarism was perpetrated--Félicien Rops may be mentioned as an
instance. Beardsley contrived a style long before he came across any
modern French illustration. He was innocent of either Salon, the
Rosicrucians, and the Royal Academy alike; but his own influence on the
Continent is said to be considerable. That he borrowed freely and from
every imaginable master, old and new, is, of course, obvious. Eclectic
is certainly applicable to him. But what he took he endowed with a
fantastic and fascinating originality; to some image or accessory,
familiar to anyone who has studied the old masters, he added the touch
of modernity which brings them nearer to us, and reached refinements
never thought of by the old masters. Imagination is the great pirate
of art, and with Beardsley becomes a pretext for invention.
Prior to 1891 his drawings are interesting only for their precocity;
they may be regarded, as one of his friends has said, more as a presage
than a precedent. You marvel, on realizing the short interval which
elapsed between their production and the masterpieces of his maturity.
His first enthusiasm was for the work of the Italian primitives, as Mr
Charles Whibley says, distinguished "for its free and flowing line."
Even at a later time, when he devoted himself to eighteenth century
models and ideals, his love of Andrea Mantegna never deserted him. He
always kept reproductions from Mantegna at his side, and declared that
he never ceased to learn secrets from them. In the "_Litany of Mary
Magdalen_" and the two versions of "_Joan of Arc_" this influence
is very marked. A Botticelli phase followed, and though afterwards
discarded, was reverted to at a later period. The British Museum and the
National Gallery were at first his only schools of art. As a matter of
course, Rossetti and Burne-Jones, but chiefly through photographs and
prints, succeeded in their turn; the influence of Burne-Jones lasting
longer than any other.
Fairly drugged with too much observation of old and modern masters, he
entered Professor Brown's art school, where he successfully got rid
of much that was superfluous. The three months' training had the most
salutary effect. He now took the advice attributed to Burne-Jones, and
unlearned much of his acquired pedantry. The mere penmanship which
disfigured some of his early work entirely disappeared. His handling
became finer, his drawing less timid. The sketch of _Molière_, it may
be interesting to note, belongs to this period of his art.
[Illustration: Chopin. Ballade III. Op. 47
_Reproduced by permission of Charles Holme, Esqre._]
A few months afterwards, he commenced the "Morte d'Arthur." Suggested
and intended to rival the volumes of the Kelmscott Press, it is his
most popular and least satisfactory performance. Still the borders have
far more variety and invention than those of Morris; the intricate
splendours of mediæval manuscripts are intelligently imitated or
adapted. The initial- and tail-pieces are delightful in themselves, and
among the most exquisite of his grotesques and embellishments. But the
popularity of the book was due to its lack of originality, not to its
individuality. Mediævalism for the middle classes always ensures an
appreciative audience. Oddly enough, Morris was said to be annoyed by
the sincerest form of flattery. Perhaps he felt that every school of art
comes to an end with the birth of the founder, and that Beardsley was
only exercising himself in an alien field of which Morris himself owned
the tithe. At all events it is not unlikely that Beardsley aroused in
the great poet and decorator the same suspicion that he had undoubtedly
done in Watts.
The "Morte d'Arthur" may be said, for convenience, to close Aubrey
Beardsley's first period; but he modified his style during the progress
of the publication, and there is no unity of intention in his types or
scheme of decoration. He was gravitating Japanwards. He began, however,
his so-called Japanesques long before seeing any real Japanese art,
except what may be found in the London shop windows on cheap trays
or biscuit-boxes. He never thought seriously of borrowing from this
source until some one not conversant with Oriental art insisted on the
resemblance of his drawings to Kakemonos. It was quite accidental.
Beardsley was really studying with great care and attention the
Crivellis in the National Gallery; their superficial resemblance to
Japanese work occasioned an error from which Beardsley, quick to
assimilate ideas and modes of expression, took a suggestion,
unconsciously and ignorantly offered, and studied genuine examples.
"_Raphael Sanzio_" (first version) was produced prior to this incident,
and "_Madame Cigale's Birthday Party_" immediately afterwards. His
emulation of the Japanese never left him until the production of the
Savoy Magazine. In my view this was the only bad artistic influence
which ever threatened to endanger his originality, or permanently
vitiate his manner. The free use of Chinese ink, together with his
intellectual vitality, saved him from "succumbing to Japan," to use
Mr Pennell's excellent phrase.
[Illustration: THE BARON'S PRAYER
_From "The Rape of the Lock"_]
A series of grotesques to decorate some rather silly anthologies
produced in the same year as the "Morte d'Arthur" are marvels of
ingenuity, and far more characteristic. With them he began a new period,
throwing over the deliberate archaism and mediævalism, of which he began
to tire. In the illustrations to "Salomé," he reached the consummation
of the new convention he created for himself; they are, collectively,
his masterpiece. In the whole range of art there is nothing like them.
You can trace the origin of their development, but you cannot find
anything wherewith to compare them; they are absolutely unique. Before
commencing "Salomé" two events contributed to give Beardsley a fresh
impetus and stimulate his method of expression: a series of visits
to the collection of Greek vases in the British Museum (prompted by
an essay of Mr D. S. McColl), and to the famous Peacock Room of Mr
Whistler, in Prince's Gate--one the antithesis of Japan, the other
of Burne-Jones. Impressionable at all times to novel sensations, his
artistic perceptions vibrated with a new and inspired enthusiasm.
Critical appreciation under his pen meant creation. From the Greek
vase painting he learned that drapery can be represented effectually
with a few lines, disposed with economy, not by a number of unfinished
scratches and superfluous shading. If the "Salomé" drawings have any
fault at all, it is that the texture of the pictures suggests some other
medium than pen and ink, as Mr Walter Crane has pointed out in his other
work. They are wrought rather than drawn, and might be designs for the
panel of a cabinet, for Limoges or Oriental enamel. "The Rape of the
Lock" is, therefore, a more obvious example of black and white art.
Beardsley's second period lasted until the fourth volume of the Yellow
Book, in which the "_Wagnerites_" should be mentioned as one of the
finest. In 1896 Beardsley, many people think to the detriment of his
style, turned his attention to the eighteenth century, in the literature
of which he was always deeply interested. Eisen, Moreau, Watteau,
Cochin, Pietro Longhi, now became his masters. The alien romantic art
of Wagner often supplied the theme and subject. The level of excellence
sustained throughout the Savoy Magazine is extraordinary, in view of the
terrible state of his health. His unexampled precision of line hardly
ever falters; and while his composition gains in simplicity, his
capacity for detail has not flagged. It is, perhaps, an accident that
in his most pathetic drawing, "_The Death of Pierrot_," his hand seems
momentarily to have lost its cunning. The same year he gave us "The Rape
of the Lock," regarded by some artists as the testament of his genius;
and an even more astonishing set of drawings to the "Lysistrata" of
Aristophanes. These are grander than the "Rape of the Lock," and larger
in treatment than anything he ever attempted. Privately issued,
Beardsley was able to give full rein to a Rabelaisian fantasy, which he
sometimes cultivated with too great persistence. Irritated by what he
considered as over-niceness in some of his critics, he seemed determined
to frighten his public. There is nothing unwholesome or suggestive about
the "Lysistrata" designs: they are as as frank, free, and outspoken as
the text. For the countrymen of Chaucer to simulate indignation about
them can only be explained "because things seen are greater than things
heard." Yet, when an artist frankly deals with forbidden subjects, the
old canons regular of English art begin to thunder, the critics forget
their French accent; the old Robert Adam, which is in all of us, asserts
himself; we fly for the fig-leaves. A real artist, Beardsley has not
burdened himself with chronology or archæology. Conceived somewhat in
the spirit of the eighteenth century, the period of graceful indecency,
there is here, however, an Olympian air, a statuesque beauty, only
comparable to the antique vases. The illusion is enhanced by the absence
of all background, and this gives an added touch of severity to the
compositions.
Throughout 1896 the general tendency his style remains uniform, though
without sameness. He adapted his technique to the requirements of his
subject. Mindful of the essential, rejecting the needless, he always
realized his genius and its limitations. From the infinite variety
of the Savoy Magazine it is difficult to choose any of particular
importance: for his elaborate manner, the first plate to "_Under the
Hill_"; and in a simpler style, the fascinating illustration to his own
poem, "_The Barber_"; "_Ave Atque Vale_" and "_The Death of Pierrot_"
have, besides, a human interest over and above any artistic quality
they possess. For the "Volpone" drawings Beardsley again developed
his style, and seeking for new effects, reverted to pure pencil work.
The ornate, delicate initial letters, all he lived to finish, must be
seen in the originals before their sumptuous qualities, their solemn
melancholy dignity, their dexterous handling, can be appreciated. The
use of a camel's-hair brush for the illustrations to "_Mademoiselle de
Maupin_," one of his last works, should be noted, as he so rarely used
one. Beardsley's invention never failed him, so that it is almost
impossible to take a single drawing, or set of drawings, as typical of
his art. Each design is rather a type of his own intellectual mood.
[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF BEAUX AND BELLES
_From "The Rape of the Lock"_]
If the history of grotesque remains to be written, it is already
illustrated by his art. A subject little understood, it belongs to the
dim ways of criticism. There is no canon or school, and the artist is
allowed to be wilful, untrammelled by rule or precedent. True grotesque
is not the art either of primitives or decadents, but that of skilled
and accomplished workmen who have reached the zenith of a peculiar
convention, however confined and limited that convention may be.
Byzantine art, one of our links with the East, should some day furnish
us with a key to a mystery which is now obscured by symbolists and
students of serpent worship. The Greeks, with their supreme sanity and
unrivalled plastic sense, afford us no real examples, though their
archaic art is often pressed into the category. Beardsley, who received
recognition for this side of his genius, emphasized the grotesque to
an extent that precluded any popularity among people who care only for
the trivial and "pretty." In him it was allied to a mordant humour, a
certain fescennine abstraction which sometimes offends: this, however,
does not excuse the use of the word "eccentric," more misapplied than
any word in the English language, except perhaps "grotesque" and
"picturesque." All great art is eccentric to the conservative multitude.
The decoration on the Parthenon was so eccentric that Pheidias was put
in prison. The works of Whistler and Burne-Jones, once derided as
eccentric, are now accepted as the commencement of great traditions.
All future art will be dubbed eccentric, trampled on, and despised;
even as the first tulip that blossomed in England was rooted out
and burnt for a worthless weed by the conscientious Scotch gardener.
[Illustration: A DESIGN FROM "LYSISTRATA"]
To compare Beardsley with any of his contemporaries would be unjust to
them and to him. He belonged to no school, and can leave no legend, in
the sense that Rossetti, Whistler, and Professor Legros have done; he
proclaimed no theory; he left no counsel of perfection to those who
came after him. In England and America a horde of depressing disciples
aped his manner with a singular want of success; while admirable and
painstaking artists modified their own convictions in the cause of
unpopularity with fatal results. The sensuous charm of Beardsley's
imagination and his mode of expression have only a superficial
resemblance to the foreign masters of black and white. He continued
no great tradition of the 'sixties; has nothing in common with the
inventive and various genius of Mr Charles Ricketts; nothing of the
pictorial propriety that distinguishes the work of his friend, Mr
Pennell, or the homogeneous congruity of Boyd Houghton, Charles Keene,
and Mr Frederic Sandys. He made use of different styles where other
men employed different mediums. Unperplexed by painting or etching
or lithography, he was satisfied with the simplest of all materials,
attaining therewith unapproachable executive power. Those who cavil
at his flawless technique ignore the specific quality of drawing
characterising every great artist. The grammar of art exists only to be
violated. Its rules can be learnt by anyone. Those who have no artistic
perception invariably find fault with the perspective, just as those
who cannot write a well-balanced sentence are always swift to detect
faults in grammar or spelling. There are, of course, weaknesses in
the extremities of Beardsley's figures--the hands and feet being
interruptions rather than continuations of the limbs. Occasional
carelessness in this respect is certainly noticeable, and the structure
of his figures is throughout capricious. It was no fault in his early
work; the hands and feet in the "_Joan of Arc_," if crude and
exaggerated, being carefully modelled. While the right hand of "Salomé"
in "_The Dancer's Reward_," grasping the head of the Baptist, is
perfectly drawn, the left is feeble, when examined closely. For sheer
drawing nothing can equal the nude figure in the colophon to "Salomé."
The outstretched, quivering hands of _Ali Baba_ are intentionally
rendered larger than proportion allows, to render dramatic expression,
not reality. For the purpose of effect he adapted proportions, realizing
that perfect congruity and reality are irreconcilable. None of the
figures in the dramatic "_Battle of Beaux and Belles_" could sit on
the fallen chair in the foreground.
There is no need to disturb ourselves with hopes and fears for the
estimation with which posterity will cherish his memory; art history
cannot afford to overlook him; it could hardly resist the pretext of
moralising, expatiating and explaining away so considerable a factor
in the book illustration of the nineties. As a mere comment on the
admirations of the last twenty years of the nineteenth century,
Beardsley is invaluable; he sums up all the delightful manias, all that
is best in modern appreciation--Greek vases, Italian primitives, the
"Hypnerotomachia," Chinese porcelain, Japanese Kakemonos, Renaissance
friezes, old French and English furniture, rare enamels, mediæval
illumination, the _débonnaire_ masters of the eighteenth century, the
English pre-Raphaelites. There are differences of kind in æsthetic
beauty, and for Beardsley it was the marriage of arabesque to figures
and objects comely or fantastic, or in themselves ugly. For hitherto
the true arabesque abhorred the graven image made of artists' hands.
To future draughtsmen he will have something of the value of an old
master, studied for that fastidious technique which critics believed to
be a trick; and collectors of his work may live to be rallied for their
taste; but the wheat and the chaff contrive to exist together through
the centuries.
A passing reference should be made to the Beardsley of popular
delusion. A student of Callot and Hogarth, he took suggestions from
the age in which he lived and from the literature of English and French
contemporaries, but with no implicit acceptance of the tenets of any
groups or schools which flutter the dove-cots of Fleet Street. He stood
apart, independent of the shibboleths of art and literature, with the
grim and sometimes mocking attention of a spectator. He revealed rather
than created a feminine type, offering no solution for the problems of
Providence.
[Illustration: D'ALBERT IN SEARCH OF IDEALS
_From "Mademoiselle de Maupin." Reproduced from the original in the
possession of Mrs. Bealby Wright_]
Applying the epithet "original" to an art so intensely reminiscent, so
ingeniously retrospective, might seem paradoxical to those unacquainted
with Beardsley's more elegant achievements. His is not the originality
of Corot and Whistler, with a new interpretation of nature, another
scheme of art and decoration, but rather the scholarly originality
of the Carracci--a scholarship grounded on a thousand traditions and
yet striking an entirely new note in art. In his imagination, his
choice of motive, his love for inanimate nature, his sentiment for
accessory,--rejected by many modern artists, still so necessary to the
modern temper,--his curious type, which quite overshadowed that of
the pre-Raphaelites, the singular technical qualities at his command,
Beardsley has no predecessors, no rivals. Who has ever managed to
suggest such colour in masses of black deftly composed? Reference to the
text is unnecessary to learn that the hair of Herodias was purple. His
style was mobile, dominating over, or subordinate to the subject, as his
genius dictated. He twisted human forms, some will think, into fantastic
peculiar shapes, becoming more than romantic--antinomian. He does not
appeal to experience but to expression. The tranquil trivialities of
what is usually understood by the illustration of books had no meaning
for him; and before any attempt is made to discriminate and interpret
the spirit, the poetical sequence, the literary inspiration which
undoubtedly existed throughout his work, side by side with technical
experiments, his exemption from the parallels of criticism must be
remembered duly.
LIST OF DRAWINGS BY AUBREY BEARDSLEY
COMPILED BY AYMER VALLANCE
LIST OF DRAWINGS BY AUBREY BEARDSLEY
JUVENILIA
1. A CARNIVAL. Long procession of many figures in fifteenth
and sixteenth century costume. Water-colour drawing. Unpublished.
Given by the artist to his grandfather, the late Surgeon-Major
William Pitt. _c._ 1880.
2. THE JACKDAW OF RHEIMS, set of illustrations to the poem.
Unpublished. _c._ 1884.
3. VIRGIL'S "ÆNEID," nine comic illustrations to Book II.
The title-page, written in rough imitation of printing, with the
Artist's naïf and inaccurate spelling, is as follows:--ILLUSTRATIONES
DE | LIBER SECUNDUS | ÆNEIDOS | PUBLIUS WIRGIUS MARONIS | by |
Beardslius | de | Brightelmstoniensis. The illustrations are
entitled:----
I. Laocoon hurleth his spear against the horse.
II. Laocoon and son crunched up.
III. Little July tries to keep up with Papa. Old Father Anchises
sitteth on Papa's shoulders and keeps a good look-out.
IV. Parvi Iulus.
V. Helen.
VI. Panthus departs, bag and baggage.
VII. Sinon telleth his tale unto King Priam.
VIII. One of the cinders of Illim.
IX. (No title.) The drawing, to illustrate two comic verses written
at the top of the paper, represents Æneas being carried up into
the air by means of a balloon attached to his helmet.
All the above are drawn in ordinary ink upon plain white paper of
the kind used for rough work at the school, and all are of uniform
size, 7-1/4 × 5 inches, except No. 9, which is on a double-size
sheet, measuring 7-1/4 × 10 inches. Unpublished. (Property of H. A.
Payne, Esq.) September to December 1886.
4. VIRGIL'S "ÆNEID," nineteen humorous sketches illustrative of Book II.,
entitled:----
I. Æneas relateth the tale to Dido.
II. Laocoon hurls the spear.
III. Sinon is brought before Priam.
IV. Calchas will not betray anyone.
V. "All night I lay hid in a weedy lake."
VI. The Palladium is snatched away.
VII. The Palladium jumpeth.
VIII. Laocoon sacrificeth on the sand.
IX. Sinon opens the bolt.
X. Hector's ghost.
XI. Æneas heareth the clash of arms.
XII. Panthus fleeth.
XIII. Pyrrhus exulteth.
XIV. Death of Priam.
XV. Æneas debateth whether he shall slay Helen.
XVI. Venus appeareth to Æneas.
XVII. Jupiter hurls the lightning.
XVIII. Æneas and company set out from Troy.
XIX. Æneas seeth Creusa's ghost.
The above drawings in ordinary ink are contained in a copy-book,
8 × 6-1/2 inches. Unpublished. Exhibited in London at Carfax
& Co.'s Galleries, October 1904. (Property of Harold Hartley,
Esq.) End of 1886.
5. THE POPE WEIGHS HEAVILY ON THE CHURCH. Pen-drawing contained in the
same copy-book with the last-named.
6. JOHN SMILES, a comic illustration to the school history book,
representing King John in the act of signing Magna Charta.
Pen-drawing on paper 7-1/4 × 5 inches. Unpublished. (Property
of H. A. Payne, Esq.)
7. SAINT BRADLAUGH, M.P., a caricature. Pen-drawing on a half
sheet of notepaper. Unpublished. (Property of H. A. Payne, Esq.)
8. AUTUMN TINTS. Caricature in black and white of the artist's
schoolmaster, Mr Marshall, expounding to his pupils the beauties
of nature. Unpublished. Given to Ernest Lambert, Esq., Brighton,
_c._ 1886-7.
Beside the above-named there must have been numbers of such drawings
belonging to this early period; for in his schooldays Aubrey
Beardsley was, to quote the words of Mr H. A. Payne, "constantly
doing these little, rough, humorous sketches, which he gave away
wholesale." Many have been destroyed or lost, others dispersed
abroad. Thus, for instance, one old Brighton Grammar School boy,
C. E. Pitt-Schenkel, told Mr Payne that he was in possession of
some, which he took out to South Africa.
9. THE JUBILEE CRICKET ANALYSIS. Eleven tiny pen-and-ink sketches,
entitled respectively:----
I. A good bowler.
II. Over.
III. Slip.
IV. Square leg.
V. Shooters.
VI. Caught.
VII. A block.
VIII. A demon bowler.
IX. Stumped.
X. Long leg.
XI. Cutting a ball.
All these subjects being represented, in humorous fashion, by literal
equivalents. These drawings, though they cannot pretend to any merit,
are notable as the earliest specimens to be published of the
artist's work. Together they formed a whole-page photo-lithographic
illustration in _Past and Present_, the Brighton Grammar School
Magazine, June 1887.
10. CONGREVE'S "DOUBLE DEALER," illustration of a scene from, comprising
Maskwell and Lady Touchwood. Pen drawing with sepia wash, on a sheet
of paper 13-1/2 × 11 inches. Unpublished. (Property of H. A. Payne,
Esq.) Signed and dated June 30, 1888.
11. HOLYWELL STREET. Wash drawing. First published in _The Poster_,
Aug.-Sept. 1898. Republished in "The Early Work of Aubrey Beardsley,
with a Prefatory Note by H. C. Marillier." John Lane, March 1899.
(Property of Charles B. Cochran, Esq., 1888.)
12. THE PAY OF THE PIED PIPER: A LEGEND OF HAMELIN TOWN. Eleven line
drawings in illustration of, as follows:----
I. Entrance of Councillors, headed by Beadle carrying a mace.
Reproduced in _The Westminster Budget_, March 25, 1898.
II. Rats feeding upon a cheese in a dish. Reproduced in _Westminster
Budget_, March 25, 1898.
III. Child climbing into an armchair to escape from the rats. Reproduced
in _The Poster_, Aug.-Sept. 1898.
IV. The Sitting of the Council, under the presidency of the Burgomaster.
V. Deputation of Ladies.
VI. Two rats on their hind legs, carrying off the Beadle's mace: behind
them are three rats running. Reproduced in _Westminster Budget_,
March 25, 1898.
VII. Meeting between the Beadle and the Piper.
VIII. The rats follow the Piper out of the town. Republished in
_Westminster Budget_, March 25, 1898, and in _The Poster_,
Aug.-Sept. 1898.
IX. Citizens rejoice at the departure of the rats.
X. The Piper is dismissed by the Beadle. Republished in _Westminster
Budget_, March 25, 1898, and also in _Magazine of Art_, May 1898.
XI. The Piper entices away the children.
The above illustrations vary in size from 3-1/4 × 2-1/2 to 6-1/2
× 4-1/2 inches. They are unsigned, but a prefatory note describes
them as being "the perfectly original designs and drawings of a
boy now in the school, A. V. Beardsley"; and adds: "Our regret is
that, lacking experience in the preparation of drawings for the
photo-engraver, the reproductions should fall so far short of the
original sketches." Published in the programme and book of words
of the Brighton Grammar School Annual Entertainment at the Dome,
on Wednesday, Dec, 19, 1888; bound up afterwards with _Past and
Present_, February 1889. Latter part of 1888.
13. A SCRAP-BOOK, size 9-1/2 × 7 inches, the fly-leaf inscribed, in his
own writing, _A. Beardsley_, 6/5/90, presented by the artist's
mother to Robert Ross, Esq. Contains the following drawings, mounted
as scraps:----
I. Manon Lescaut, three drawings to illustrate different scenes
from. Executed with very fine pen and ink, the latter having, as
compared with maturer works, a brownish tinge. One of them first
appeared in "A Second Book of Fifty Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley"
(Leonard Smithers, December 1898), and all three were included in
"The Later Work of Aubrey Beardsley" (John Lane, 1901).
II. La Dame aux Camélias. 4-3/8 inches square, pen and brownish
ink with wash. First published in "Second Book," and afterwards in
"Later Work." This is a totally different design from that which
afterwards appeared, with the same title, in "The Yellow Book."
See below.
III. Tartarin, two illustrations of, in pencil and colours, size
4-1/8 × 2-3/4 and 4-1/2 × 3-1/2 inches respectively.
IV. La Leçon (Madame Bovary). 5-1/4 × 6-3/4. Chinese white and dark
sepia wash. First published in "Second Book," and again in "Later
Work."
V. L'Abbé Birotteau (Curé de Tours). 3 × 2 inches. Pen-and-ink
with wash, on pale greenish paper.
VI. L'Abbé Troubert (Curé de Tours). 5 × 2-3/4 inches. Dark sepia wash.
VII. Madame Bovary. 5-5/8 × 3-1/8 inches. Pencil. First published in
"Second Book," and again in "Later Work."
VIII. Sapho (Daudet). Wanting. Over its place has been gummed another
drawing, also wanting, its title written at the foot,
_L'homme qui rit_.
IX. Le Cousin Pons. 5-1/8 × 2-3/8 inches. Indian ink.
X. Portrait of Alphonse Daudet. 2-3/4 × 2-3/16 inches. Indian ink on
pale blue paper.
XI. Watteau, Ma Cousine (Cousin Pons). 5-1/2 × 2-3/4 inches. Pen-and-ink
with wash on pale grey toned paper.
XII. Mademoiselle Gamard (Curé de Tours). 3-1/8 × 2-1/8 inches. Indian
ink wash.
XIII. Madame Cibot (Cousin Pons). 4 × 2-7/8 inches. Indian ink wash.
XIV. (Jack) Attendons! 3-5/8 inches high, irregular silhouette.
Dark sepia wash.
XV. Jeanne D'Arc, the childhood of. 9 × 3-3/8 inches. Sepia and madder
wash on toned paper. First published in "Second Book," again in
"Later Work."
XVI. Frontispiece to Balzac's "Contes Drôlatiques." 6-3/4 × 4-1/8 inches.
Drawn after the manner of Richard Doyle. First published in
"Second Book," again in "Later Work."
XVII. Phèdre (Act ii. scene 5). 3-7/8 × 3-1/2 inches. Pencil and colours.
First published in "Second Book," again in "Later Work."
XVIII. Manon Lescaut, three-quarter length, woman to left, with fan.
5-1/4 × 3-1/2 inches. Water-colour on grey paper. First published
in "Second Book," again in "Later Work."
XIX. Beatrice Cenci. 6-1/8 × 2-3/4 inches. Pencil and sepia wash. First
published in "Second Book," again in "Later Work."
Unless otherwise stated as above, the works in this collection are
unpublished; all were executed 1889-90.
LATER WORK.
14. FRANCESCA DI RIMINI (Dante). Head in profile, to left; pencil.
First published in "Later Work."
15. DANTE AT THE COURT OF CAN GRANDE DELLA SCALA. Circular design,
in pencil. (Property of Miss H. Glover.)
16. DANTE IN EXILE. Dante seated on the left, the words of the Sonnet
inscribed on the right, with decorations recalling some design of
William Blake's. Signed A.V.B. First published in "Later Work."
(Formerly the property of the late Hampden Gurney, Esq.)
17. "I SAW THREE SHIPS COME SAILING BY ON CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE MORNING."
Pencil. Designed as a Christmas card for the late Rev. Alfred Gurney.
Published in "Later Work." _c._ 1890-1.
18. HAIL MARY. Profile of a head to left. Pencil drawing, 4-1/2 × 5-1/4
inches. First published in _The Studio_, May 1898, again in "Early
Work." (Property of Frederick H. Evans, Esq.) 1891.
19. HEAD, three-quarter face to right, with a Wreath of Grapes and Vine
Leaves and background of tree trunks. Lead-pencil sketch 5-1/2 × 5-5/8
inches. Unpublished. (Property of John Lane, Esq.) _circa_ 1891.
20. THEL GATHERING THE LILY. Pen-and-ink with water-colour wash. (Formerly
the property of Robert Ross, Esq.)
21. TWO FIGURES IN A GARRET, both seated, a woman haranguing a young man.
Ink and wash sketch, 3-1/4 × 4-1/8 inches. Published in "Early Work."
(Property of Frederick H. Evans, Esq.)
22. E. BURNE-JONES. Portrait sketch in pen-and-ink, with slight wash.
A memorandum of Aubrey Beardsley's first call on Sir Edward
Burne-Jones, dated Sunday, 12th July 1891, and signed with monogram,
A.V.B. Size, 6-3/4 × 4-1/8 inches. Eight copies only. Printed on
India paper. Published by James Tregaskis, Caxton Head, High Holborn,
in 1899. July 1891.
23. THE WITCH OF ATLAS. Pen-and-ink and water-colour wash. First reproduced
(lacking ornamental border) in "Second Book," again in "Later Work."
(Formerly the property of Robert Ross, Esq.)
24. MOLIÈRE. Blue water-colour wash. First published in "Later Work."
(Formerly the property of Robert Ross, Esq.)
25. DIE GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG. Decorative composition in white and Indian ink,
influenced by Burne-Jones. First published in "Second Book," again in
"Later Work." (Formerly the property of Robert Ross, Esq.)
26. SOLEIL COUCHANT. Decorative composition in Indian ink. (The motif of
the central part was subsequently adapted for a vignette in the
"Morte Darthur," Book II. chap. xii.) First published in "Later
Work." (Formerly the property of the late Hampden Gurney, Esq.)
27. TANNHÂUSER. Study for decorative composition, in Indian ink.
5-5/8 × 7-1/2 inches. First published in "Later Work." (Property of
Dr Rowland Thurnam.) 1891.
28. WITHERED SPRING. Decorative composition in Indian ink. Catalogued in
"Fifty Drawings" as "Lament of the Dying Year." (The motif of the
central part was subsequently adapted for a vignette in the "Morte
Darthur," Book I. chap. xii.) First published in "Later Work."
(Property of Dr Rowland Thurnam.)
29. I. PERSEUS. Pen-and-ink and light wash. Design for an upright panel,
with standing nude figure, above it a frieze of smaller figures.
18 × 6-3/4 inches. First published in "Early Work." (Property of
Frederick H. Evans, Esq.)
II. A pencil sketch of two figures, unfinished, on the reverse of the
preceding. Published in "Early Work."
30. L'ABBÉ MOURET. Decorative design for frontispiece of Zola's "La Faute
de l'Abbé Mouret." Ink and wash. First published in "Under the Hill."
John Lane. 1904. (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
31. HAMLET PATRIS PANEM SEQUITUR. Pencil drawing. Printed in red, as
frontispiece to _The Bee_, the Magazine of the Blackburn Technical
School, November 1891; reprinted, in black, in "Second Book," again
in "Early Work." Latter part 1891.
32. PERSEUS AND THE MONSTRE. Pencil design, 5-1/2 × 7-1/2 inches. First
appeared in illustration of an article entitled, "The Invention of
Aubrey Beardsley," by Aymer Vallance, in _The Magazine of Art_, May
1898; again in "Early Work," (Property of Aymer Vallance, Esq.) 1891.
33. THE PROCESSION OF JEANNE D'ARC. Pencil outline, treatment inspired by
Mantegna, 19-1/2 long by 6-1/2 inches high. First published in
_Magazine of Art_, May 1898; again as double page in "Second Book";
again, reduced, in collotype, in "Early Work." (Property of Frederick
H. Evans, Esq.) 1891-2.
A pen-and-ink version of the Procession, 30 inches long by 7 high,
was made subsequently, about the Spring of 1892, for Robert Ross,
Esq. Published in _The Studio_; see below.
34. THE LITANY OF MARY MAGDALEN. Pencil drawing. First published in
"Second Book," again in "Later Work." (Formerly Property of More
Adey, Esq.) 1892.
35. THE VIRGIN AND LILY. Madonna standing in front of a Renaissance niche
and surrounded by Saints, among them St John Baptist kneeling.
Pencil outline. Reproduced in photogravure in "Later Work."
(Formerly the property of the late Rev. Alfred Gurney, afterwards
in the possession of his son, the late Hampden Gurney, Esq.)
36. CHILDREN DECORATING A TERMINAL GOD. Pen-and-ink. (Formerly the
property of M. Puvis de Chavannes.)
37. FRED BROWN, N.E.A.C. Pen-and-ink sketch of the art-master in studio.
Signed with monogram A.V.B. First published in "Under the Hill."
(Property of Miss Nellie Syrett.)
38. STUDY OF FIGURES, horizontal fragment from, containing five heads and
parts of two more. Pencil. Published in "Under the Hill." (Property
of Miss Nellie Syrett.)
39. PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST. Full face. Pen-and-ink. First published in
"Second Book," again in "Later Work." (Presented by Robert Ross,
Esq., to the British Museum.)
40. SIDONIA THE SORCERESS. A design to illustrate Meinhold's Romance,
representing Sidonia, not in religious habit, with the demon-cat,
Chim. William Morris's criticism that the face of Sidonia was not
pretty enough, and another suggested improvement on the part of
a friend of Aubrey Beardsley's, induced him to try to better the
picture by altering the hair. The result was so far from satisfactory
that it is almost certain that the drawing was destroyed by the
artist. First half of 1892.
41. LE DÉBRIS D'UN POETE. Pen-and-ink. First published in "Aubrey
Beardsley," by Arthur Symons (Sign of the Unicorn, London, 1898).
(Property of André Raffalovich, Esq.)
42. INCIPIT VITA NOVA. Chinese, white, and Indian ink on brown paper.
First published in "Second Book," again in "Later Work." (Property
of Messrs Carfax & Co.) 1892.
43. HEAD OF AN ANGEL, in profile, to left, flaming heart held in left
hand. Pencil, on a half-sheet of grey notepaper, signed with monogram
A.V.B. 5-3/4 × 3-7/8 inches. First published in photogravure "Second
Book," again in "Later Work"; also printed in 4-inch square form on
card for private distribution, Christmas 1905. (Property of the
artist's sister, Mrs George Bealby Wright [Miss Mabel Beardsley].)
_c._ 1892.
44. ADORAMUS TE. Four angels in a circle (7 inches in diameter) playing
musical instruments, pencil and coloured chalks. Signed A.V.B.
monogram. Designed as a Christmas card for the late Rev. Alfred
Gurney. First published in photogravure in "Second Book," again in
"Later Work." (Property of Mrs George Bealby Wright.)
45. A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Two angels, one of them playing a hand-organ, in a
circle (7-3/4 inches diameter), pencil, and coloured chalks.
Designed as a Christmas card for the late Rev. Alfred Gurney.
First published in photogravure in "Second Book," again in "Later
Work." Also in photogravure, 3 inches diameter, for private
circulation. (Property of Mrs George Bealby Wright.) Christmas, 1892.
46. LA FEMME INCOMPRISE. Pen-and-ink and wash. First published in the
spring number of _To-Day_, 1895; again in the _Idler_ magazine,
March 1897.
47. SANDRO BOTTICELLI, three-quarter face to left, pencil, signed
with monogram A.V.B.; 14 × 7-3/4 inches; a reconstruction of
the Florentine painter's physiognomy from his extant works, to
illustrate Aubrey Beardsley's theory that every artist tends to
reproduce his own physical type. Presented by the artist to Aymer
Vallance, Esq. First published in the _Magazine of Art_, May 1898;
afterwards in "Early Work." _c._ 1892-3.
48. RAPHAEL SANZIO. Full-length figure, three-quarter face to left, a
decorative panel in pen-and-ink, 10-3/4 × 3-7/8 inches, exclusive
of border lines. Unpublished. (Property of Messrs Obach & Co.)
49. CEPHALUS AND PROCRIS. Pen-and-ink.
50. SMALL BOOKMARKER, woman undressing, a Turkish table in the foreground.
Pen-and-ink. First published in "Second Book," again in "Later Work."
(Property of Sir William Geary, Bart.) 1893.
51. HERMAPHRODITUS, seated figure, pencil and pale colour tints. Reproduced
in colour in "Later Work." (Property of Julian Sampson, Esq.)
52. L'APRÈS-MIDI D'UN FAUNE, par Mallarmé; four designs extra-illustrating
a copy of. One of them, a pen-and-ink vignette of a faun, full face,
signed with monogram A.V.B., was published in "Second Book." The
others unpublished. 1893.
53. DECORATIVE SKETCH DESIGN OF A SAILING SHIP. 1-7/8 × 2-1/2 inches.
Pen-and-ink on white from the back of a letter to Aymer Vallance,
Esq. First published in _Magazine of Art_, May 1898; again in "Early
Work." _c._ 1893.
54. ANGEL PLAYING HAND-ORGAN. Pen-and-ink and slight wash, on pale grey
notepaper, from a letter to Aymer Vallance, Esq. First published in
_Magazine of Art_, May 1898; again in "Early Work." _c._ 1893.
55. THE PALL MALL BUDGET, 1893 and 1894.
I. MR H. A. JONES AND HIS BAUBLE; pen-and-ink. Feb. 2, 1893, p. 150.
II. THE NEW COINAGE. Four designs that were not sent in for
competition, p. 154. Another design, embodying a caricature of
Queen Victoria, was suppressed.
III. "BECKET" AT THE LYCEUM.
1. Mr Irving as Becket; wash drawing. Feb. 9th, front page.
2. Master Leo, p. 188.
3. Queen Eleanor, p. 188.
4. Margery, p. 188.
5. The King makes a Move on the Board, p. 188.
6. Miss Terry (as Rosamond), p. 188.
7. Mr Gordon Craig, p. 190.
8. The Composer, p. 190.
IV.
1. THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF EMILE ZOLA, p. 202.
2. EMILE ZOLA; a portrait, p. 204.
(Republished in "Pall Mall Pictures of the Year," 1893,
and in _The Studio_, June 1893.)
V. VERDI'S "FALSTAFF," AT MILAN, Feb. 16th.
Initial letter V; pen-and-ink, p. 236.
Portrait of Verdi; ink and wash, p. 236.
VI. POPE LEO XIII.'S JUBILEE, Feb. 23rd.
The Pilgrim (old style), p. 270.
The Pilgrim (new style), p. 270.
VII. THE REAPPEARANCE OF MRS BANCROFT.
1. Mr Arthur Cecil (Baron Stein), p. 281.
2. Mrs Bancroft (Lady Fairfax), p. 281.
3. Mr Forbes Robertson (Julian Beauclere), p. 281.
4. Mr Bancroft (Count Orloff), p. 281.
VIII. CARICATURE OF A GOLF PLAYER, in classical helmet, March 9th, p. 376.
IX. ORPHEUS AT THE LYCEUM, March 16th.
1. One of the Spirits, Act II., p. 395.
2. Orpheus (Miss Clara Butt), p. 395.
3. A Visitor at the Rehearsal, p. 395.
4. Some Dresses in the Chorus, p. 395.
X. PORTRAIT OF THE LATE JULES FERRY: wash drawing, March 23rd, p. 435.
XI. BULLET-PROOF UNIFORM: Tommy Atkins thinks it rather fun, March 30,
p. 491.
XII. MR FREDERICK HARRISON'S "IDEAL NOVELIST," April 20, p. 620.
XIII. A NEW YEAR'S DREAM, after studying Mr Pennell's "Devils of Notre
Dame." Republished in "Early Work." Jan. 4th, 1894, p. 8.
56. MR PARNELL, sketch portrait of the Irish party leader, head and
shoulders, three quarters face to left, pencil, half tone reproduction,
4-3/4 × 3-1/2 inches.
57. I. THE STUDIO. Design for wrapper in two states, the original
design containing a seated figure of Pan, omitted in the later
version. First state on brown paper. The same, reduced, in black
on green, for prospectus, republished in _The Studio_, May 1898,
and again in "Early Work."
Second state, black on green, also in gold on rough white paper for
presentation to Royalty (Nov. 15th, 1893). The same, reduced, and
printed in dark green on white, for a prospectus, republished in
"Early Work." The same, enlarged and printed in black on light
green, for a poster.
THE STUDIO, NO. I, April 1893, accompanying an article entitled "A New
Illustrator: Aubrey Beardsley," by Joseph Pennell, contained:----
II. Reduced reproduction of the pen-and-ink replica of Jeanne d'Arc
procession. Republished as large folding supplement in No. 2.
III. Siegfried, Act II., from the original drawing in line and wash,
signed A.V.B., presented by the artist to Sir Edward Burne-Jones,
after whose death it was given back by Lady Burne-Jones, to the
artist's mother, Mrs Beardsley. Republished in "Early Work."
IV. The Birthday of Madame Cigale, line and wash, 15 inches long by
9-1/2 inches high, influenced by Japanese models. Reproduced in
"Early Work." (Property of Charles Holme, Esq.)
V. Les Revenants de Musique, line and wash. Reproduced in "Early
Work." (Property of Charles Holme, Esq.)
VI. Salome with the head of St John the Baptist. Upright panel in
Chinese ink on white, 10-1/8 by 5-1/8 inches, exclusive of framing
lines. This was the first design suggested to the artist by Oscar
Wilde's French play of "Salome." It differs from the later version
of the same subject in being richer and more complex. It contains
the legend, omitted in the later version, _j'ai baisé ta bouche
Iokanaan, j'ai baisé ta bouche_. The treatment is obviously
influenced by Japanese work, and also by that of the French
Symboliste school, _e.g._ Carlos Schwabe. Republished in "Early
Work." Subsequently to its appearance in _The Studio_, the artist
experimentally tinted it with green colour washes. In its final
state it has not been published. (Formerly the property of Mrs
Ernest Leverson, now of Miss K. Doulton.)
VII. Reduced reproduction of the second version of the Jeanne d'Arc
procession. The same appeared, full size, as a folding plate
supplement, in No. 2 of _The Studio_, May 1893.
In the first number of _The Studio_ (April) also were published,
by anticipation, four designs from the "Morte Darthur," due to
begin its serial appearance in the following June, viz.:--
VIII. Initial letter I.
IX. Merlin taketh the child Arthur into his keeping (full page,
including border).
X. Ornamental border for full page.
XI. Frieze for chapter-heading; six men fighting, on foot, three of
them panoplied. Reproduced in _Magazine of Art_, November 1896,
"Fifty Drawings," _Idler_, March 1897, and _St Paul's_, April 9th,
1898. The original drawing is 13-3/4 inches long by 4-1/2 inches.
As may be seen, even in the reduced reproduction, one inch
at either end was added by the artist at the request of his
publisher, so as to increase the proportionate length of the
ornament. Subsequently Mr Frederick H. Evans photographed the
drawing, full size, and produced fifteen platinotype copies,
of which twelve only were for sale, and the plate destroyed.
58. DESIGN OF DANDELIONS, for publishers' trade mark for Dent & Co.
59. LE MORTE DARTHUR, by Sir Thomas Malory. J. M. Dent & Co. 300 copies on
Dutch hand-made paper and 1500 ordinary copies. Issued in Parts,
beginning June 1893.
I. Vol. I., 1893. Frontispiece--"How King Arthur saw the Questing
Beast, and thereof had great marvel." Photogravure.
Full-page illustrations:--
II. Merlin taketh the child Arthur into his keeping. (Reduced
reproduction in _Idler_, May 1898.)
III. The Lady of the Lake telleth Arthur of the sword Excalibur.
IV. Merlin and Nimue.
V. Arthur and the strange mantle.
VI. How four queens found Launcelot sleeping. (Property of A. E.
Gallatin, Esq.)
VII. Sir Launcelot and the witch Hellawes. (Property of A. E.
Gallatin, Esq.)
VIII. How la Beale Isoud nursed Sir Tristram.
IX. How Sir Tristram drank the love drink.
X. How la Beale Isoud wrote to Sir Tristram.
XI. How King Mark found Sir Tristram sleeping.
XII. How Morgan le Fay gave a sword to Sir Tristram.
XIII. Vol. II., 1894. Frontispiece--"The achieving of the Sangreal."
Photogravure. (This was the first design executed for the work.)
Full page and double page illustrations:--
XIV. How King Mark and Sir Dinadan heard Sir Palomides making great
sorrow and mourning for la Beale Isoud (double page).
XV. La Beale Isoud at Joyous Gard (double page).
XVI. How Sir Launcelot was known by Dame Elaine (full page).
XVII. How a devil in woman's likeness would have tempted Sir Bors (double
page).
XVIII. How Queen Guenever rode on maying (double page).
XIX. How Sir Bedivere cast the sword Excalibur into the water (full
page).
XX. How Queen Guenever made her a nun (full page).
In the two volumes there are altogether 548 ornaments,
chapter-headings, borders, initials, tail-pieces, etc.; but some of
them are repetitions of the same design, others reproductions of
the same design in two different sizes. (Two of these are in the
Victoria and Albert Museum. Eight belong to Pickford Waller, Esq.
Others are the property of Hon. Gerald Ponsonby, R. C. Greenleaf,
Esq., W. H. Jessop, Esq., M. H. Sands, Esq., Robert Ross, Esq.,
and Messrs Carfax & Co.)
XXI. Chapter-heading, a dragon, with conventional foliage spray
branching into marginal ornaments; printed, but not published
in the book.
XXII. Initial letter J with guardian griffins; pen-and-ink, 5-1/2 × 3-1/2
inches.
XXIII. Unfinished border design, first published in "Whistler's Art Dicta
and Other Essays" by A. E. Gallatin (Boston, U.S.A., and London,
1903). (Property of A. E. Gallatin, Esq.)
XXIV. Original study, approved by the publisher, for wrappers of serial
issue of the "Morte Darthur," yellowish green water-colour on
white paper, 10-1/4 × 8-1/4 inches. This design, comprising
lilies, differs from that which was finally produced by the
artist and published (next item). (Property of Aymer Vallance,
Esq.) 1893.
Design for wrappers of serial issue, in black on grey paper, in
two states, the earlier or trial-state, having blank spaces for
the lettering, only the title being given as "La Mort Darthure."
XXV. Design in gold on cream-white cloth cases of the bound volumes.
Nineteen of the above designs were republished in "A Book of
Fifty Drawings," and again in "Later Work," including full-size
reproductions of the following, which had suffered through
excessive reduction in the published "Morte Darthur."
XXVI. Merlin (in a circle), facing list of illustrations in Vol. I. The
same reproduced in _The Idler_, March 1897.
XXVII. Vignette of Book I., chapter xiv. Landscape with piper in a meadow
and another figure in the sky.
XXVIII. Vignette of Book III., chapter iii. Three swans swimming.
XXIX. Vignette of Book V., chapter x. Nude woman rising out of the sea,
holding in one hand a sword, in the other a rose.
60. PALL MALL MAGAZINE, JUNE 1893.
I. Of a Neophyte, and how the Black Art was revealed unto him by the
Fiend Asomuel. Full-page illustration in pen and ink. Asomuel,
meaning insomnia, was a neologism of the artist's own devising,
made up of the Greek _alpha_ privative, the Latin _somnus_, and
the Hebrew _el_, for termination analogous to that of other
spirits' names, such as Gabriel, Raphael, Azrael, etc.,
reproduced in "Early Work," July 1893.
II. The Kiss of Judas. Full-page illustration in pen-and-ink. Reproduced
in "Early Work."
61. LA COMÉDIE AUX ENFERS, pen and ink, published in "Modern Illustration,"
by Joseph Pennell. (G. Bell & Sons, 1895.) Imp. 16mo. 1893.
62. I. EVELINA, by Frances Burney. (Dent & Co., 1894.) Design in outline
for title-page.
II. EVELINA AND HER GUARDIAN, design for illustration, pen and ink and
wash, 6-7/8 × 4-7/8 (exclusive of marginal lines), not published.
III. Another illustration for the same, "Love for Love," a wash drawing,
7-1/2 × 5-1/4, unpublished. 1893.
63. VIRGILIUS THE SORCERER. David Nutt, 1893. Frontispiece to the large
paper copies only. Reproduced in "Early Work."
64. THE LANDSLIP, frontispiece to "Pastor Sang," being William Wilson's
translation of Björnson's drama, "Over Ævne." Longmans & Co., 1893.
A black and white design, in conscious imitation of Albert Dürer,
as the peculiar form of the signature A. B. shows, the only occasion
on which the artist employed this device. Reproduced in "Early Work."
(Property of Messrs Shirley & Co., Paris.)
65. BON MOTS. 3 VOLUMES. DENT & CO., 1893.
I. Title-page reproduced in "Later Work."
II. Figure with fool's bauble, and another small ornament for the cover.
III. 208 grotesques and other ornaments in the three volumes. Some of
these, however, are repeated, and some printed in different sizes.
Three of them reproduced in "Later Work." In an article by Max
Beerbohm in the _Idler_, May 1898, accompanied by "some drawings
that have never before been reproduced," are nine small vignettes
of the "Bon Mots" type, of which number three only are explicitly
ascribed to "Bon Mots" (A sheet of them belongs to W. H. Jessop,
Esq. Nineteen are the property of Pickford Waller, Esq.)
66. FOLLY, intended for "Bon Mots," but not used in the book. The figure
is walking along a branch of hawthorn, the left hand upraised, and
holding the fool's baton; a flight of butterflies in lower left-hand
corner; with drawing 8 × 5-1/4 inches. (Property of Littleton Hay,
Esq.)
67. PAGAN PAPERS, a volume of Essays by Kenneth Grahame. Elkin Mathews
and John Lane, 1893. Title-page, design for.
68. ADA LUNDBERG, head and shoulders to right, coloured crayons on brown
paper. Reproduced in colour in "Later Work." (Property of Julian
Sampson, Esq.)
69. KEYHOLES SERIES OF NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES.--(The publication
of this series was begun by Messrs Elkin Mathews and John Lane, and
afterwards continued by Mr John Lane alone.)
I. Keynotes by George Egerton, 1893. Title-page design (the same
employed for the cloth cover). Ornamental key, embodying the
author's monogram, on back of "Contents" page (the same device
on the back of the book). This plan was adopted for each volume
of the series.
II. The Dancing Faun, by Florence Farr (the Faun in the design has
the eyeglass and features of J. McNeill Whistler).
III. Poor Folk. Translated from the Russian of F. Dostoievsky, by Lena
Milman.
IV. A Child of the Age, by Francis Adams.
V. The Great God Pan and the Inmost Light, by Arthur Machen, also
unfinished sketch in pencil upon the back of the finished design.
VI. Discords, by George Egerton.
VII. Prince Zaleski, by M. P. Shiel.
VIII. The Woman who Did, by Grant Allen.
IX. Women's Tragedies, by H. D. Lowry, 1895.
X. Grey Roses, by Henry Harland.
XI. At the First Corner, and other Stories, by H. B. Marriott Watson.
XII. Monochromes, by Ella D'Arcy.
XIII. At the Relton Arms, by Evelyn Sharp.
XIV. The Girl from the Farm, by Gertrude Dix.
XV. The Mirror of Music, by Stanley V. Makower.
XVI. Yellow and White, by W. Carlton Dawe.
XVII. The Mountain Lovers, by Fiona Macleod.
XVIII. The Woman who Didn't, by Victoria Crosse.
XIX. Nobody's Fault, by Netta Syrett.
XX. The Three Impostors, by Arthur Machen.
XXI. The British Barbarians, a hill-top novel, by Grant Allen.
XXII. Platonic Affections, by John Smith.
Design for wrapper of "Keynotes" series, John Lane, 1896.
(With the exception of No. 2 all the above Keynotes designs are
the property of John Lane, Esq.)
70. THE BARBAROUS BRITISHERS, a tip-top novel, by H. D. Traill. Title-page
design (the same employed for the cloth cover), comprising a portrait
of Miss Ada Lundberg, the whole being a parody of the design for
"The British Barbarians," _vide supra_. John Lane, 1896. (Property
of John Lane, Esq.) Reproduced in "Early Work."
71. THREE HEADPIECES, two of which appeared in _St Paul's_, April 2nd,
1898, the other in the same paper, April 9th, 1898. All three
republished in "Early Work." (Property of Henry Reichardt, Esq.)
1893-4.
72. WOMEN REGARDING A DEAD MOUSE. Three-quarter figure in leaden grey.
Unfinished painting in oils, the only experiment the artist ever made
in this medium; influenced by Walter Sickert. _c._ 1894.
73. MENU OF THE TENTH ANNUAL DINNER OF THE PLAYGOERS' CLUB IN LONDON. Two
drawings, one of them only reproduced in "Early Work." January 28th,
1894.
74. LUCIAN'S TRUE HISTORY. Laurence & Sullen, privately printed, 1894.
Black and white illustrations to
I. A Snare of Vintage. Reproduced in "Later Work."
Another drawing of the same subject and title, but different
rendering, 6 × 4-1/2 inches, was inserted loose in large paper
copies only; not noted in "Contents" page of the book.
II. Dreams. Reproduced in "Later Work." This drawing was executed
obviously at the same period as "Siegfried" and "The Achieving
of the Sangreal."
III., IV. Two more drawings, intended for the same work, but not included
in it. Twenty copies of each were printed privately. One of them
is unpublished; of the other, the upper portion was published
in "Later Work." These illustrations were the earliest of the
Artist's designs not intended for public circulation.
LUCIAN'S TRUE HISTORY, translated by Francis Hickes, illustrated by
William Strang, J. B. Clark, and Aubrey Beardsley, with an
Introduction by Charles Whibley, was published by A. H. Bullen.
London, 1902.
75. QUILP'S BARON VERDIGRIS. Black and white. Designed for Messrs Henry
& Co. First published in "Second Book" and again in "Later Work."
1894.
76. POSTER FOR "THE COMEDY OF SIGHS," by Dr John Todhunter, at the Avenue
Theatre, March 29th, 1894. Three-quarter length figure of woman in
deep blue, standing behind a gauze curtain with light green round
spots powdered over it, 28-3/4 × 4-3/4 inches. The same has since
been printed, the original size, in black and white. The same reduced,
and printed in blue on light green paper for the programme sold in
the theatre: also printed in black on toned paper for the programme
of Mr G. Bernard Shaw's play, "Arms and the Man," April 21st, 1894.
Also still further reduced, in black on pale mauve-pink paper for
the wrapper of Mr W. B. Yeats's play, "The Land of Hearts' Desire."
Reproduced in _Idler_ magazine, March 1897; again in "Fifty Drawings,"
also in "Later Work." This was Aubrey Beardsley's first poster design.
1894.
77. POSTER FOR MR FISHER UNWIN'S "PSEUDONYM LIBRARY." Female figure in
salmon-pink dress standing on the opposite side of the road to a
second-hand book-store. The scheme of colouring--salmon-pink, orange,
green, and black--was suggested to Aubrey Beardsley by a French
poster. 29-1/2 × 13 inches.
The same reduced, in colours, to form an advertisement slip for
insertion in books and magazines.
The same reduced, printed in black, 6 copies only, on Japanese
vellum. Reproduced in "Fifty Drawings" and "Later Work." Also used
as cover-design for the "Dream and the Business," by John Oliver
Hobbes.
Similar motif, black and white drawing; exhibited at the New English
Art Club Exhibition at the New Gallery. (Property of T. Fisher Unwin,
Esq.)
78. POSTER FOR MR FISHER UNWIN'S CHILDREN'S BOOKS. Woman reading while
seated in a groaning-chair; black purple. Reproduced in black in
"Fifty Drawings" and "Later Work."
79. Poster Design. A lady and large sunflower, scheme of colouring purple
and yellow. Unpublished. Purchased by Mr Fisher Unwin and destroyed
accidentally in New York.
80. SKETCH PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST, head and shoulders, three-quarter face
to left; in imaginary costume with V-shaped opening to his coat and
high-shouldered sleeves; in charcoal. First published in _The Sketch_,
April 14th, 1894, again in "Early Work."
81. SKETCH PORTRAIT OF HENRY HARLAND, head and shoulders, three-quarter
face to right, in charcoal. First published in _The Sketch_, April
11th, 1894, again in "Early Work." (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
82. PORTRAIT OF JAMES M'NEILL WHISTLER. (Property of Walter Sickert, Esq.)
83. THE FAT WOMAN (a caricature of Mrs Whistler). First published in
_To-Day_, May 12th, 1894, afterwards republished in "Fifty Drawings"
and "Later Work"; also in _Le Courrier Français_, November 11th,
1894, with the title "_Une Femme bien Nourrie_." (Formerly the
property of the late Mrs Cyril Martineau (Miss K. Savile Clarke)).
84. WAITING, a haggard, expectant woman, wearing V-necked bodice and large
black hat, seated in a restaurant, with a half-emptied wine-glass on
a small round table before her; black-ink drawing, 7-3/8 × 3-1/2
inches, unpublished. (Property of Pickford Waller, Esq.)
85. MASKED PIERROT AND FEMALE FIGURE, water and gondolas in background,
small square in black and white, published in _To-Day_, May 12th, 1894.
86. SALOME, A tragedy in one act. Translated by Lord Alfred Douglas from
the French of Oscar Wilde. Elkin Mathews and John Lane, 1894.
Pictured with the following designs by Aubrey Beardsley:----
I. The woman (or man) in the moon (Frontispiece).
Border Design for Title-page (two states, the first cancelled).
(Property of John Lane, Esq.)
Border Design for List of Pictures. (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
II. The Peacock Skirt. (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
III. The Black Cape. A burlesque, substituted for a drawing of John
and Salome, which was printed but withheld, and subsequently
published in "Early Work." (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
IV. A Platonic Lament. (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
V. Enter Herodias (two states, the first cancelled). (The drawing
in its original state the property of Herbert J. Pollit Esq.)
A proof of this drawing in its first state, now the property of
Frank Harris, Esq., is inscribed by the artist on the left-hand
top corner:
"Because one figure was undressed
This little drawing was suppressed.
It was unkind, but never mind,
Perhaps it all was for the best."
VI. The Eyes of Herod. (Note one of Herod's white peacocks.) (Property
of John Lane, Esq.)
VII. The Stomach Dance. (The author makes Salome dance, barefooted, the
Dance of the Seven Veils.) (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
VIII. The Toilette of Salome. Substituted for a former drawing of the
same subject, printed in two states but withheld, the second state
subsequently published in "Early Work" (Property of Robert Ross,
Esq.)
IX. The Dancer's Reward. (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
X. The Climax. This is a revised and simpler version of the design
which had appeared in the first number of _The Studio_.
Tailpiece. The corpse of Salome being coffined in a puff-powder
box. (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
NOS. I., IV., V., AND VI. of the above contain caricatures of
Oscar Wilde.
XI. Small design, printed in gold on cloth, front cover of "Salome";
another, consisting of an elaboration of the artist's device,
for the under side of cover.
XII. Study of a design of peacock feathers for cover of "Salome," not
used at the time, but subsequently reproduced for the first time
in facsimile in "Early Work," and again as an illustration
following the title-page in reissue of "Salome" (John Lane, 1907);
also in gold on light green cloth for ornament of the binding,
and in olive green on orange-red for the paper cap. Also in gold
on blue cloth for binding of "Under the Hill," 1904. (Property of
John Lane, Esq.) This (1907) edition, moreover, contains the two
illustrations suppressed in the original edition, viz., "John and
Salome" (Property of John Lane, Esq.), now placed in order as
No. 8, and "The Toilet of Salome, II.," now placed as No. 13
(Property of John Lane, Esq.) and an original title-page.
XIII. The Salome drawings were reproduced the actual size of the
originals, and published in a portfolio. In this was included a
design of Salome seated upon a settee. Described in "Early Work"
as "Maitresse d'Orchestre." (John Lane, 1907.)
87. DANCER, WITH DOMINO. (The property of His Honour Judge Evans.)
88. PLAYS, BY JOHN DAVIDSON. Elkin Mathews and John Lane, 1894. Design on
frontispiece to, containing portrait caricatures of Sir Augustus
Harris, and Oscar Wilde and Henry Harland, black and white; the same
design in gold on the cloth cover. Reproduced in "Early Work," and
again, with Aubrey Beardsley's letter to the _Daily Chronicle_ on
the subject, in "Under the Hill," 1904. (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
Design for Title-Page of the above-named. Black and white;
reproduced in "Early Work."
89. THE YELLOW BOOK, 1894 AND 1895.
I. Design for prospectus of the "Yellow Book": a woman examining books
in a box at a bookstall: black on yellow paper. Elkin Mathews
and John Lane, 1894. (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
Vol. I., April 1894. Elkin Mathews and John Lane.
II. Design on front side of yellow cover. (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
III. Design on under side of cover; the same repeated in the later
volumes. (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
IV. Design on title-page: a woman playing a piano in a meadow.
Reproduced, with Aubrey Beardsley's letter on the subject, to the
_Pall Mall Budget_, in "Under the Hill" (1904). (Property of John
Lane, Esq.)
V. L'Education Sentimentale: in line and wash.
VI. Night Piece.
VII. Portrait of Mrs Patrick Campbell in profile, to left in outline.
Formerly in possession of Oscar Wilde, now in National Gallery
at Berlin.
VIII. Bookplate (designed in 1893) for John Lumsden Propert, Esq.
Vol. II., July 1894. Elkin Mathews and John Lane.
IX. Design on front side of cover. (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
X. Design on title-page.
XI. The Comedy-Ballet of Marionettes. Three designs.
XII. Garçons de Café. (Property of A. W. King, Esq.)
XIII. The Slippers of Cinderella. The artist subsequently coloured the
original with scarlet and green, in which state it is unpublished.
(Property of Brandon Thomas, Esq.)
XIV. Portrait of Madame Réjane, full-length profile to left, in outline.
(Property of Frederick H. Evans, Esq.)
Volume III., October 1894. John Lane.
XV. Design on front side of cover. (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
XVI. Design on title-page.
XVII. Portrait of Mantegna. Published, for a practical joke, in the name
of Philip Broughton. (Property of G. Bernard Shaw, Esq.)
XVIII. Portrait of the artist; fancy portrait of himself in bed. (Property
of John Lane, Esq.)
XIX. Lady Gold's Escort. (Property of Brandon Thomas, Esq.)
XX. The Wagnerites at the performance of "Tristan und Isolde."
Reproduced, on large scale, in _Le Courrier Français_, December
23rd, 1894, with the title "Wagnériens et Wagnériennes."
XXI. La Dame aux Camélias. Reprinted in _St Paul's_, April 2nd, 1894,
with the title "Girl at her Toilet." (Formerly the property of
the late Miss K. Savile Clarke [Mrs Cyril Martineau].)
XXII. From a pastel; half-length study of a woman in white cap, facing
to left. (Published, for a practical joke, in the name of Albert
Foschter.)
Volume IV., January 1895. John Lane.
XXIII. Design, on front side of cover.
XXIV. Design on title-page.
XXV. The Mysterious Rose Garden, burlesque Annunciation. (Property of
John Lane, Esq.)
XXVI. The Repentance of Mrs ----. (The kneeling figure is a reminiscence
of the principal one in "The Litany of Mary Magdalen.")
XXVII. Portrait of Miss Winifred Emery (outline). (Property of Mrs Cyril
Maude.)
XXVIII. Frontispiece for Juvenal. Double-page supplement.
XXIX. Design for "Yellow Book" Cover, not used. First published in "Early
Work." (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
XXX. Show-card to advertise "The Yellow Book"; female figure standing,
her hat hanging from her right hand, and daffodils growing
at her feet. Dark green on light yellow paper. Reproduced in
black-and-white in "Early Work." (The property of John Lane, Esq.)
90. PORTRAIT OF RÉJANE wearing a broad-brimmed hat with dark bow in front,
head and shoulders, full face slightly to left, wash drawing.
Reproduced by Swan Electric Engraving Company for the "Yellow Book,"
but not used. Unpublished.
91. RÉJANE, black-and-white design of the actress standing, half length,
fan in hand, against a white curtain with conspicuous tassel. First
published in "Second Book," and again, in a reduced state, as
"Title-page ornament, hitherto unpublished" in "Early Work." 1893-4.
92. MADAME RÉJANE, full-length portrait sketch, ink and wash. First
published in "Second Book," again in "Later Work."
93. MADAME RÉJANE, profile to left; sitting, legs extended, on a sofa,
ink and wash. First published in "Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen,"
by Joseph Pennell (Macmillan, 1894), again in "Fifty Drawings," and
in the _Idler_ Magazine, March 1897.
94. RÉJANE, portrait head in profile to left, in red crayon and black ink,
7-1/2 × 6 inches. First published in facsimile in _The Studio_, May
1898, again in "Later Work." (Property of Frederick H. Evans, Esq.)
1894.
95. A POSTER DESIGN. Back view of a woman, her face in profile to right,
holding a pigmy in her right hand. First published in "Early Work."
(Property of John Lane, Esq.)
96. A POSTER DESIGN (Singer). Woman seated at a piano. First reproduced in
_The Poster_, October 1898, again in "Second Book" and in "Later Work."
97. LADY TO RIGHT GAZING AT A HAT ON A MILLINER'S BONNET STAND, headpiece
for the "Idlers' Club" section in the _Idler_ Magazine, 1894.
98. PIERROT AND BLACK CAT, small square in black-and-white for a book
ornament.
99. HEAD AND SHOULDERS OF A CHINESE PRIEST, together with the Head of a
Satyr. 25 copies only printed on folio sheet, and 10 copies only in
red. It is not known for what they were intended. Published by James
Tregaskis, Caxton Head.
100. LES PASSADES, night scene, in pen-and-ink with ink wash, 10 × 5
inches. First published in _To-Day_, November 17, 1894, again in the
_Idler_ Magazine, March 1897.
101. VENUS BETWEEN TERMINAL GODS. Frontispiece for a version of the
Tannhäuser legend, to be published by Messrs H. Henry & Co. Ltd.,
a project never completed. Design in black-and-white, showing,
especially in the treatment of flying dove and of the background
of rose-trellis, the influence of Charles Ricketts or Laurence
Housman. Reproduced in "Second Book," and again in "Later Work."
_Circa_ 1894-5.
102. FRONTISPIECE AND TITLE-PAGE, together forming one complete design, for
"The Story of Venus and Tannhäuser," to be published by John Lane,
but never completed. (_Cf._ "Under the Hill" in _The Savoy_, 1896.)
Reproduced in "Early Work." Dated 1895. (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
103. THE RETURN OF TANNHÄUSER TO VENUSBERG. A design originally intended
for the above-named book. Subsequently presented by the artist to
J. M. Dent, Esq. First published, in illustration of an article by
Max Beerbohm, in the _Idler_ Magazine for May 1898, and again, in
larger format and, as the initials in left hand corner show, reversed,
in "Second Book" and again in "Later Work." The _Idler_ version has
a slight effect of half-tone in the brambles in the foreground, but
the "Later Work" reproduction is pure black-and-white contrast.
104. VENUS. Design for title-page, in black-and-white. First published in
_The Studio_, 1898, and afterwards in "Early Work," March 2, 1899,
where it is described as "hitherto unpublished." (The property of
John Lane, Esq.)
105. DESIGN FOR COVER OF "THE CAMBRIDGE A, B, C." Reproduced in "Early
Work."
106. PIERROT AS CADDIE, Golf Club Card, designed for the opening of The
Prince's Ladies' Golf Club, Mitcham, pen-and-ink. Published in "Early
Work." (Formerly the property of Mrs Falconer-Stuart, now of R.
Hippesley Cox, Esq.) Dated 1894.
107. A POSTER DESIGN; two female figures drawn in black-and-white for Mr
William Heinemann. Reproduced in "Early Work."
108. THE LONDON GARLAND, published by the Society of Illustrators, 1895.
A pen-and-ink drawing of a female in very elaborated dress reaching
from her neck to the ground, intended to represent a ballet-dancer
with a costume as prescribed by Mrs Grundy. The original drawing,
unfinished, contains another figure, not reproduced, on the left.
The original title for this drawing was "At a Distance." Reproduced
in "Second Book." (Property of Joseph Pennell, Esq.)
109. AUTUMN. Design in black-and-white for a calendar to be published by
William Heinemann. Reproduced in "Early Work."
110. TALES OF MYSTERY AND WONDER, by Edgar Allen Poe (Stone & Kimball,
Chicago, U.S.A., 1895); four designs in pen-and-ink for large paper
edition of----
I. The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
II. The Black Cat.
III. The Masque of the Red Death. First published in the "Chap Book"
(Chicago), Aug. 15, 1894, again in same, April 1, 1898.
IV. The Fall of the House of Usher.
111. OUTLINE PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST in profile to left; in imaginary
costume, with a lace ruff to the neck, and earrings in the ears.
Published in "Posters in Miniature," and again in "Early Work."
A half-tone block from variant of the same, the earring as well as
the button on lappel and waist of coat more pronounced, was published
in _The Hour_, March 27, 1895, and reproduced in _Magazine of Art_,
November 1896.
112. A CHILD STANDING BY ITS MOTHER'S BED, black-and-white, chiefly
outline. First published in _The Sketch_, April 10, 1895. Reproduced
in "Early Work." Formerly in the possession of Max Beerbohm, Esq.,
but since lost.
113. THE SCARLET PASTORALE, pen-and-ink. First published in _The Sketch_,
April 10, 1895. Also printed in scarlet on white. Reproduced in
"Fifty Drawings."
114. PORTRAIT OF MISS ETHEL DEVEREUX, pencil drawing. (Property of Mrs
Roy Devereux.) _Circa_ 1895.
115. DESIGN FOR AN INVITATION CARD, ink outline; seated Pierrot smoking,
a copy of the "Yellow Book," Vol. IV., on the couch at his side.
Drawn for Mr John Lane's Sette of Odd Volumes Smoke. Reproduced
in _The Studio_, September 1895. (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
116. THREE DECORATIVE DESIGNS from the brown paper cover of Aubrey
Beardsley's own copy of "Tristan und Isolde." Two reproduced in
"Later Work." (Property of Frederick H. Evans, Esq.)
117. MAX ALVARY AS "TRISTAN" in Wagner's opera "Tristan und Isolde,"
half-length profile to left, pen-and-ink and wash with unusual
monogram signature. 10 × 5-1/2 inches. First published in "Aubrey
Beardsley's Drawings, a catalogue and a list of criticisms," by
A. E. Gallatin (New York, 1903). (Formerly the property of Rev.
G. H. Palmer, now of A. E. Gallatin, Esq.)
118. FRAU KLAFSKY AS "ISOLDE" in above-named opera, pen-and-ink and pale
green water-colour, 13 × 4-3/4 inches. First published in the _Critic_
(New York), December, 1902. (Formerly the property of Rev. G. H.
Palmer, now of A. E. Gallatin, Esq.)
119. ISOLDE; autolithograph in scarlet, grey, green, and black on white;
supplement to _The Studio_, October 1895.
120. WOMAN RECLINING IN A MEADOW BY THE BORDER OF A LAKE, LISTENING TO A
FAUN READING OUT OF A BOOK TO HER. Oblong design in ink on white; a
variant of the design for wrapper of Leonard Smithers' Catalogue,
No. 3. First published in _The Studio_, May 1898, again in "Early
Work," where it is described as "hitherto unpublished." (Property
of John Lane, Esq.) 1895.
121. DESIGN FOR WRAPPER OF "CATALOGUE OF RARE BOOKS," NO. 3. (Leonard
Smithers, September 1895.) The same figures as in the last-named,
but the landscape has an urn and additional trees to adapt the
design to upright shape. Black on pale blue-green paper.
122. CHOPIN BALLADE III., illustration for. Woman rider, mounted on a
prancing white horse to left. Wash drawing. First published in _The
Studio_, May 1898, in half tones of grey, with deep purplish black;
again in "Second Book." (Property of Charles Holme, Esq.) 1895.
123. CHOPIN'S NOCTURNES, frontispiece to. Pen-and-ink and wash. First
published in "Early Work." (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
124. EARL LAVENDER, by John Davidson (Ward & Downey, 1895), design for
frontispiece to. Woman scourging a kneeling, barebacked figure.
Pen-and-ink outline. Reproduced in "Early Work." (Property of John
Lane, Esq.)
125. YOUNG OFEG'S DITTIES, by George Egerton (John Lane, 1895), title-page
and cover design for.
126. MESSALINA, with another woman on her left, black-and-white, with black
background. First published in "Second Book," again in "Early Work,"
where it is described as "hitherto unpublished." 1895.
127. TITLE-PAGE ORNAMENT, standing nude figure playing double-bass, black
background. First published in "Early Work."
128. PORTRAIT OF MISS LETTY LIND in "The Artist's Model." Pen-and-ink
outline. Published in "Early Work." (Property of Miss Letty Lind.)
129. ATALANTA IN CALYDON, full-length figure to right; pen-and-ink and
wash. First published in "Early Work." (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
130. COVER DESIGN FOR FAIRY TALES by Count Hamilton, to be published
by Messrs H. Henry & Co., Ltd.
131. BALZAC'S "LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE," design (head, full face) for front side
and another for the reverse of cover. Reproduced in "Later Work."
132. THE BROOK TRILLS OF PERNICIOUS BY RICHARD LE PHILISTIENNE, title-page
to burlesque, that of "The Book Bills of Narcissus," by Richard le
Gallienne. Unpublished. (Property of J. M. Dent, Esq.)
133. A SELF-PORTRAIT, grotesque outline profile to left, with diminutive
silk hat, from the fly-leaf of an envelope in the possession of
J. M. Dent, Esq. Unpublished.
134. THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT, by George Meredith, small sketch to
illustrate, in pen-and-ink, contained in a letter to Frederick
H. Evans, Esq. Unpublished.
135. AN EVIL MOTHERHOOD, by Walt Ruding (Elkin Mathews, 1896), frontispiece
to. Pen-and-ink. Reproduced in "Early Work."
136. CAFE NOIR. Another design for the frontispiece of the last-named book,
pen-and-ink and wash; bound up in six review copies only, and then
recalled. Reproduced in "Early Work." (Property of M. Jean Ruelle.)
137. TITLE-PAGE, an architectonic design. First published as the title of
"Early Work" (John Lane, 1899). (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
138. ORNAMENTAL TITLE-PAGE FOR "THE PARADE." Messrs H. Henry & Co., Ltd.,
1896. Reproduced in "Later Work."
139. TAIL-PIECE to Catalogue of Lord Carnarvon's Library, 1896.
140. SAPPHO, by H. T. Wharton. (John Lane, 1896.) Design for cover in gold
on blue. Reproduced in "Early Work." (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
141. PIERROT'S LIBRARY. (John Lane, 1896.) Design for title-page of, two
designs for end papers, printed in olive green; design for front
cover and vignette for reserve cover, printed in gold on red cloth.
Reproduced in "Early Work." (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
142. LOVE ENSHRINED IN A HEART IN THE SHAPE OF A MIRROR, pen-and-ink.
First published in "Aubrey Beardsley" by Arthur Symons. (Sign of the
Unicorn, 1898.) (Property of André Raffalovich, Esq.)
143. THE LYSISTRATA OF ARISTOPHANES. (Leonard Smithers, privately
printed, 1896.) Eight pen-and-ink designs to illustrate----
I. Lysistrata.
II. The Toilet of Lampito.
III. Lysistrata haranguing the Athenian Women.
IV. Lysistrata defending the Acropolis.
V. Two Athenian Women in Distress.
VI. Cinesias soliciting Myrrhina.
VII. The Examination of the Herald.
VIII. The Lacedemonian Ambassadors.
An expurgated version of No. 3 was published in "Second Book,"
and was repeated together with expurgated versions or fragments
from the remainder of the set in "Later Work."
144. THE RAPE OF THE LOCK, by Alexander Pope. An heroi-comical poem in five
cantos, "embroidered with nine drawings by Aubrey Beardsley," 4to.
Leonard Smithers, 1896. Now published by John Lane. (Property of
Messrs Keppel, New York.)
I. The Dream.
II. The Billet-Doux (vignette). Reproduced in _St Paul's_, April 2,
1898. (Property of Mrs Edmund Davis.)
III. The Toilet.
IV. The Baron's Prayer.
V. The Barge.
VI. The Rape of the Lock. (The property of Messrs Keppel, New York.)
VII. The Cave of Spleen.
VIII. The Battle of the Beaux and the Belles. Reproduced in the _Idler_,
March 1897.
IX. The New Star (cul-de-lampe).
Cover design for the original edition.
Cover design for the Bijou edition. (John Lane.) Reproduced in
"Later Work."
145. DESIGN FOR WRAPPER OF CATALOGUE OF RARE BOOKS, No. 7. (Leonard
Smithers, 1896.) A lady seated on a striped settee reading; a parrot
on stand on the right. Black on leaden-grey paper. Reproduced in
"Second Book," 1896, and "Later Work."
146. THE PROSPECTUS OF THE SAVOY. DESIGN FOR.
I. A burlesque Cupid on a stage with footlights, one hand holding a
copy of the book, whence it appears that the original intention
was to produce the first number in December 1895. Reproduced
in "Later Work." Latter part of 1895. (Property of John Lane,
Esq.)
II. A suppressed variant of the above, same motif reversed, only with
John Bull substituted for the Cupid. Reproduced in "Later Work."
III. Initial letter A in the above Prospectus. Reproduced in "Later
Work."
IV. Publisher's Trade-mark for Leonard Smithers. First published in
"Savoy" Prospectus. The same, name omitted, appears in "Later
Work" with the title of "Siegfried," 1895.
THE SAVOY, No. 1, January 1896. (Leonard Smithers.)
V. Cover design, in two states. The original was suppressed because
it depicted too realistically the contempt of the child in the
foreground for the "Yellow Book," with which the artist had
recently ceased to be connected. The revised version was
republished in "Fifty Drawings," and again in "Later Work."
(Property of Mrs George Bealby Wright.)
VI. Title-page. Repeated as title-page in No. 2, and republished in
"Later Work."
VII. Drawing to face Contents. Caricature of John Bull. Republished
in "Later Work."
VIII. The Three Musicians. Illustration of the artist's poem, same
title. Republished in "Fifty Drawings" and "Later Work."
IX. Another drawing to illustrate the above, but withheld.
It appeared for the first time in "A Book of Fifty Drawings,"
1897. Republished in "Later Work" and "Under the Hill."
X. Tailpiece to the above. Republished in "Later Work" and "Under
the Hill."
XI. The Bathers (on Dieppe Beach). Republished in "Fifty Drawings"
and "Later Work."
XII. The Moska. This subject was inspired by the children's dance at
the Casino, Dieppe. Republished in the _Idler_ Magazine, March
1897, and again in "Later Work." (Property of Mrs Edmund Davis.)
XIII. The Abbé. This and the two designs which follow appeared as
illustrations to "Under the Hill," a romantic novel, by Aubrey
Beardsley. Republished in "Later Work." All the illustrations
of "Under the Hill" reissued with text in a volume bearing same
title. John Lane, 1904.
XIV. The Toilet of Helen. Republished in "Fifty Drawings" and "Later
Work."
XV. The Fruit Bearers. Republished in "Later Work."
XVI. A large Christmas Card, in black-and-white. Madonna, with
fur-edged, richly-flowered mantle. Issued together with, but
not bound in, the book. Republished in "Fifty Drawings" and
"Later Work."
THE SAVOY. No. 2. April 1896.
XVII. Cover Design. Republished in "Later Work."
XVIII. A Foot-note. (Fancy portrait of the artist.) Republished, with
omissions, in "Later Work." Also adapted in gold on scarlet for
cloth cover of "Second Book."
XIX. The Ecstasy of Saint Rose of Lima. Illustration of "Under the
Hill." Republished in "Fifty Drawings" and "Later Work."
XX. The Third Tableau of "Das Rheingold." Republished in "Fifty
Drawings" and "Later Work."
Scene reproduced from "The Rape of the Lock."
THE SAVOY. No. 3. July 1896.
XXI. Cover Design. Republished in "Later Work."
XXII. Title-page. Puck on Pegasus. Repeated for the title of all the
succeeding numbers. Republished in "Later Work." Also, reduced,
as design for title-page of "Fifty Drawings," and in gold on
scarlet for the under side of cloth cover of same.
XXIII. The Coiffing. This and the following design accompanied Aubrey
Beardsley's "Ballad of a Barber." The Coiffing was republished
in the _Idler_ Magazine, March 1897, and in "Fifty Drawings"
and "Later Work." (Property of Messrs Obach & Co.)
XXIV. A Cul-de-Lampe. Cupid carrying a gibbet. Republished in "Later
Work."
THE SAVOY. No. 4. August 1896.
XXV. Cover Design. Republished in "Later Work."
THE SAVOY. No. 5. September 1896.
XXVI. Cover Design. (Signed, for a practical joke, Giulio Floriani.)
Republished in "Fifty Drawings" and "Later Work."
XXVII. The Woman in White. A sketch in white on brown paper. Republished
in "Fifty Drawings" and "Later Work."
THE SAVOY. No. 6. October 1896.
XXVIII. Cover Design; the Fourth Tableau of "Das Rheingold." Republished
in "Fifty Drawings" and "Later Work."
XXIX. The Death of Pierrot. A pen-and-ink sketch. Reproduced in "Later
Work." (Property of Messrs Obach & Co.)
THE SAVOY. No. 7. November 1896.
XXX. Cover Design. Republished in "Later Work."
XXXI. Ave atque Vale; Catullus, Carmen C.I. Republished in "Fifty
Drawings" and "Later Work."
XXXII. Tristan und Isolde. Republished in "Later Work."
THE SAVOY. No. 8 (the last issued). December 1896.
XXXIII. Cover Design. Republished in "Later Work." The same adapted, with
the addition of heavy black bands, and is printed in green and
scarlet, for small poster to advertise the completed work.
XXXIV. A Répétition of "Tristan und Isolde." Republished in "Later Work."
XXXV. Don Juan, Sganarelle and the Beggar; from Molière's "Don Juan."
Republished in "Later Work."
XXXVI. Mrs Margery Pinchwife, from William Wycherley's "Country Wife."
Republished in "Later Work."
XXXVII. Frontispiece to "The Comedy of the Rheingold." Republished in
"Later Work."
XXXVIII. Flosshilde, a Rhine Maiden; to illustrate "Das Rheingold."
Republished in "Later Work." (Property of Herbert J. Pollit, Esq.)
XXXIX. Erda; to illustrate "Das Rheingold." Republished in "Later Work."
XL. Alberich; to illustrate "Das Rheingold." Republished in "Later
Work." (Property of Herbert J. Pollit, Esq.)
XLI. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Republished in "Later Work."
(Property of Herbert J. Pollit, Esq.)
XLII. Carl Maria von Weber. Republished in "Later Work."
XLIII. Count Valmont, from "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," by Choderlos de
Laclos. Republished in "Later Work."
XLIV. Et in Arcadia Ego. Republished in "Later Work."
XLV. Small ornament for the cover of bound volumes of "The Savoy."
XLVI. SKETCH OF A CHILD (young girl), unfinished, in pencil, on
the reverse of "A Foot-note." First published in "Early Work."
(Property of Frederick H. Evans, Esq.)
147. A SEATED FIGURE. Unpublished design for the Savoy, occurring as a
grotesque in "Bon Mots." (Property of G. D. Hobson, Esq.)
148. VERSES, BY ERNEST DOWSON (Leonard Smithers, 1896), cover design for.
Reproduced in "Later Work." (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
149. THE PIERROT OF THE MINUTE. A Dramatic Phantasy in one act. By Ernest
Dowson. Leonard Smithers, 1897. (Property of John Lane, Esq.) Four
designs to illustrate:----
I. Frontispiece.
II. Headpiece.
III. Initial letter P.
IV. Cul-de-Lampe.
Reproduced in "Second Book" and "Later Work." Cover design for the
same.
150. APOLLO PURSUES DAPHNE. (Property of Herbert J. Pollit, Esq.)
151. THE SOUVENIRS OF LEONARD, Cover design for. Printed in gold on
purple. Reproduced in "Later Work." 1897.
152. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MADAME DU BARRY, by Douglas. Leonard Smithers,
1897. Cover design for. Reproduced in "Later Work." 1897.
153. FRONTISPIECE TO A BOOK OF BARGAINS, by Vincent O'Sullivan. Leonard
Smithers, 1897. Reproduced in the _Idler_, March 1897.
154. COVER DESIGN FOR A BOOK OF FIFTY DRAWINGS, BY AUBREY BEARDSLEY.
Leonard Smithers, 1897. Reproduced in gold on scarlet cloth.
Republished on a reduced scale, in black-and-white, in "Later Work."
155. SILHOUETTE OF THE ARTIST. First published as a tailpiece at the end
of "Fifty Drawings." Also in _Idler_ Magazine, March 1897, and in
"Later Work."
156. BOOK-PLATE OF THE ARTIST. First published in "Fifty Drawings," 1897,
also in "Later Work."
157. ALI BABA. COVER DESIGN FOR THE FORTY THIEVES.
I. First published in "Second Book," again in "Later Work," 1901.
(Property of Messrs Robson & Co.)
II. ALI BABA IN THE WOOD. First published in "Fifty Drawings," 1897.
Also in _Idler_, May 1898, and again in "Later Work."
158. ATALANTA IN CALYDON. First published in "Fifty Drawings," 1897; also
in the _Idler_ Magazine, March 1897, and again in "Later Work."
(This drawing was exhibited at the Carfax Exhibition, October 1904,
under the title of "Diana," 77.)
159. MESSALINA RETURNING FROM THE BATH. Pen-and-ink and water colours.
First published in "Second Book," again in "Later Work." This drawing,
together with the other one of Messalina, drawn in 1895 (see _supra_),
two of Bathyllus, and one representing Juvenal scourging a woman
(this last, slightly altered, reproduced in "Later Work"), belongs
to a series of illustrations to the _Sixth Satire_ of Juvenal.
Leonard Smithers, privately printed, 1897.
160. THE HOUSES OF SIN, by Vincent O'Sullivan. Leonard Smithers, 1897.
Cover design for. Reproduced in "Second Book," again in "Later Work."
161. LA DAME AUX CAMÉLIAS. Sketch in water colour to right. On the fly-leaf
of a copy of the book given to the artist by M. Alexandre Dumas, fils.
First published in "Second Book," again in "Later Work." 1897.
162. BOOK-PLATE FOR MISS OLIVE CUSTANCE (Lady Alfred Douglas). Reproduced
in photogravure in "Early Work."
163. ARBUSCULA. Drawing in line and wash, for the _édition de luxe_ of
Vuillier's "History of Dancing." William Heinemann, 1897. Reproduced
in photogravure; also an early impression of the same printed in a
green tint. (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
164. MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN, by Théophile Gautier. Leonard Smithers, 1898.
Designs to illustrate:----
I. Mademoiselle de Maupin, frontispiece, water colour. Reproduced in
facsimile by Messrs Boussod, Valadon & Co., for limited edition,
and, like the rest, in photogravure for ordinary edition.
Reproduced as frontispiece to "Later Work."
II. D'Albert (small design).
III. D'Albert in search of Ideals. (Property of Mrs George Bealby
Wright.)
IV. The Lady at the Dressing Table. (Property of Walter Pollett, Esq.)
V. The Lady with the Rose.
VI. The Lady with the Monkey. All the above reproduced in photogravure
in "Later Work."
165. BEN JONSON HIS VOLPONE: OR THE FOXE. 4to. Leonard Smithers, 1898.
I. Design in gold on blue for the cloth cover. Same in black-and-white
for opening page. Frontispiece, design in pen-and-ink.
II. Vignette to the Argument. Initial letter V, with column and
tasselled attachments to the capital. This and the remaining
designs were executed in pen and crayon.
III. Vignette to Act I. Initial letter V, with an elephant, having a
basket of fruits on his back. (Property of Herbert J. Pollit, Esq.)
IV. Vignette to Act II. Initial letter S, with a monster bird, having
a pearl chain attached to its head. (Property of Herbert J.
Pollit, Esq.)
V. Vignette to Act III. Initial letter M, with seated Venus and Cupid
under a canopy, between two fantastic gynæcomorphic columns.
(Property of Herbert J. Pollit, Esq.)
Vignette to Act IV. (The same as the design for Act II. repeated.)
VI. Vignette to Act V. Initial letter V, with a horned terminal figure
of a man or satyr. (Property of Herbert J. Pollit, Esq.)
All these Volpone designs were reproduced in "Later Work." Drawn at
the close of 1897 and early part of 1898, they constitute the latest
designs produced by Aubrey Beardsley before his death.
In his published List, Mr A. E. Gallatin mentions several sketches
and other drawings in private letters which, for lack of detailed
information, I have not included in my List. Many of Aubrey
Beardsley's drawings are constantly changing hands. In each case
the name of the last known owner is given. Where no owner's name
appears, no information has been obtainable. Some of the finest
drawings, I am informed upon good authority, have now passed into
the collection of Herr Wärdofer of Vienna.
I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness to the artist's mother and
sister, to Mr G. R. Halkett, Mr H. C. Marillier, Mr H. A. Payne,
and Mr Pickford Waller. To Mr Frederick H. Evans, who kindly placed
his collection at my disposal, I am under special obligations.
AYMER VALLANCE
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