Aubrey Beardsley
(b. 21 August 1872 - d. 17 March 1898)
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His drawings in black ink, influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A. McNeill Whistler. Beardsley's contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau and poster styles was significant, despite the brevity of his career before his early death from tuberculosis. Beardsley was a public as well as private eccentric. He said, "I have one aim—the grotesque. If I am not grotesque, I am nothing." Wilde said he had "a face like a silver hatchet and grass green hair. Beardsley was meticulous about his attire: dove grey suits, hats, ties, yellow gloves. He would appear at his publisher's in a morning coat and court shoes.
Beardsley was the most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau era, renowned for his dark and perverse images and grotesque erotica, which were the main themes of his later work. His illustrations were in black and white, against a white background. Some of his drawings, inspired by Japanese shunga artwork, featured enormous genitalia. His most famous erotic illustrations concerned themes of history and mythology; these include his paintings for a privately printed edition of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, and his drawings for Oscar Wilde's play Salome, which eventually premiered in Paris in 1896. Other major illustration projects included an 1896 edition of The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope. He also produced extensive illustrations for books and magazines (e.g., for a deluxe edition of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur) and worked for magazines such as The Studio and The Savoy, of which he was a co-founder. As a co-founder of The Savoy, Beardsley was able to pursue his writing as well as illustration, and a number of his novels, including Under the Hill (a story based on the Tannhäuser legend) and "The Ballad of a Barber" appeared in the magazine.
Beardsley was a caricaturist and did some political cartoons, mirroring Wilde's irreverent wit in art. Beardsley's work reflected the decadence of his era, and his influence was enormous, clearly visible in the work of the French Symbolists, the Poster art Movement of the 1890s and the work of many later-period Art Nouveau artists such as Papé and Clarke. Some alleged works of Beardsley's were published in a book titled Fifty Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley, Selected From the Collection of Mr. H. S. Nicols. These were later discovered to be forgeries, distinguishable by their almost pornographic erotic elements, rather than Beardsley's somewhat subtler use of sexuality.
Although Beardsley was associated with the homosexual clique that included Oscar Wilde and other English aesthetes, the details of his sexuality remain in question. Speculation about his sexuality includes rumors of an incestuous relationship with his elder sister, Mabel, who may have become pregnant by her brother and miscarried. In December 1896 Beardsley suffered a violent hemorrhage leaving him in precarious health. By April 1897, a month after his conversion to Roman Catholicism, his deteriorating health prompted a move to the French Riviera. There he died a year later on 16 March 1898 of tuberculosis at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Menton, France, attended by his mother and sister. He was 25 years old. Following a Requiem Mass in Menton Cathedral the following day, his remains were interred in the Cimetiere du Trabuquet.