Aubrey Beardsley

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Jacques-Émile Blanche : Aubrey Vincent Beardsley , oil painting, 1895

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (born August 21, 1872 in Brighton , † March 16, 1898 in Menton , France ) was a British illustrator , poet , graphic artist and caricaturist .

life and work

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was 1872 in Brighton ( county East Sussex , England born) in a family of upper middle class. His father, Vincent, lost all his fortune and was forced to work in London breweries. His mother, Ellen Pitt, contributed to the family's income by taking piano lessons. Both Aubrey and his sister Mabel were gifted and were both initially considered musical prodigies. Aubrey's health has been in poor health since early childhood, for example, at the age of nine, he had his first documented hemorrhage as a result of consumption (tuberculosis) . He began to portray his teachers in cartoons while he was still in primary school in Brighton . From 1884 he attended the Bristol Grammar School, where he wrote a play in 1885, which he performed with other students. Around the same time, his first drawings and caricatures were published in the Bristol Grammar School's Past and Present newspaper. Beardsley left school as early as 1888 to try his hand at first writing in an architectural office in London and later with a life insurance company. At this time he was also self-taught in art and literature.

Beardsley's photograph, 1893

Major health setbacks in 1889 tied him to his bedside and forced him to quit his job - but he remained loyal to art. An unannounced visit to the Pre-Raphaelite Sir Edward C. Burne-Jones became aware of Beardsley and his works. Burne-Jones managed to get the draftsman to attend evening classes at Westminster Art School , where he received his first and only professional artistic training. Beardsley's own research in various art collections, libraries and antiquarian bookshops brought him closer to 19th century French literature and Japanese woodcuts , which, together with the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites, can be found in his works.

J'ai baisé ta bouche Iokanaan , first version of the apotheosis from the illustrations for Oscar Wilde's Salome , 1893
The powder puff , final vignette to Wildes Salome , 1893–1894

In 1892 a publisher came across Beardsley's drawings through a mutual acquaintance and commissioned him with the illustrations for Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur , which appeared in 1894 with Beardsley's work. Oscar Wilde's first edition of Salome from 1893, written in French, inspired Beardsley to create a drawing on the motif of Salome with the head of John the Baptist , which was published along with eight others in the first issue of the art magazine The Studio . In return, this drawing drew the writer's attention to Beardsley and resulted in his being commissioned with the illustrations for the English edition of Salome . The publication of the English edition, however, cast a shadow over the friendship between the two, since in the opinion of the oriental lover Wilde the drawings looked too Japanese. Beardsley, on the other hand, who was never very good at handling criticism and viewed all critics as his enemies, countered by mocking Wilde in a few cartoons.

Title page to The Yellow Book , 1894
Isolde , illustration from the Berlin art and literature magazine Pan , 1899

At the same time about Beardsley met the writer Henry Harland and the publisher John Lane know, with whom he brought out the first edition of The Yellow Book in 1894 . Although the magazine was heavily criticized in its early days due to its excessive, erotic, almost pornographic content, it was a complete success and helped Beardsley to great fame. The young draftsman's constant knowledge of his imminent death due to consumption (a doctor had forecast that he would still be five years old in 1892) drove him time and again to extreme hard work, creativity and creative diversity. In 1896 Beardsley left the Yellow Book and, together with the publisher Leonard Smithers, known for pornography and erotica , set up The Savoy as a counterpart to the Yellow Book . The new magazine drew heavier criticism again due to its content, which was offensive for the time, but helped Beardsley to gain further fame by publishing his illustrations for other books, such as the Lysistrata des Aristophanes .

In view of his progressive illness, Beardsley placed himself in the care of the Catholic Church and converted in 1897. In order to relax in the mild Mediterranean climate, he spent the last year of his life in southern France, where at the age of 25 he experienced the consequences of his life in the Alpes-Maritimes department succumbed to chronic illness.

The Peacock Skirt , illustration for Salome , 1893–1894

style

Beardsley's style thrives on strong, large-scale black and white contrasts; his favorite reproduction technique was zinc etching . Among the best-known works of the draftsman are the illustrations for the book Salome , in which Beardsley - like many other artists of his time - was influenced by Japanese woodcuts. In many of Beardsley's works, the kimono- like robes of his figures and the distortion of perspective into a flat picture, reminiscent of vase painting, are striking. The often organic looking ornaments and curved lines in his pictures are also typical (cf. The Peacock Dress or The Apotheosis ). In Germany, Beardsley's influence can be seen in the work of artists such as Marcus Behmer , Thomas Theodor Heine , Franz von Bayros or partly also Heinrich Vogeler , in the Anglo-Saxon area especially in Harry Clarke , William H. Bradley and William Thomas Horton .

Beardsley's importance as a writer is marginal within English literature. His most important work is the unfinished erotic novella Under the Hill , in which the Wagner admirer Beardsley ties in with the legend of Tannhauser and Venus . In this text, the Venusberg is described as a baroque court. The Munich publisher Hans von Weber published a German version in 1908 under the title Venus und Tannhäuser. A romantic novel. as a private print for 246 subscribers.

Fakes

Photograph of Beardsley, around 1895

In numerous publications about Beardsley you can find illustrations that bear one of his signature, but do not come from him and are easy to recognize due to their low quality. These are mainly 50 well-known drawings that were published in 1920 in the book Fifty Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley, selected from the collection owned by Mr. H. S. Nichols, New York , the circulation was only 500 copies. But there are also two real Beardsley books with a similar title: A Book of Fifty Drawings (Leonard Smithers, London 1897) and A Second Book of Fifty Drawings (Leonard Smithers, London 1899). In addition, there are other forgeries, the quality of which is significantly higher than that of the Nichols book of 1920, but still does not come close to Beardsley's artistry. The fake drawings can be easily recognized by the fact that they are depicted without direct reference to text and by the indifferent title, for example “Peacock with sunrise” and “Toilet of a courtesan”. Often picture elements of real Beardsley illustrations were copied and put together to form new pictures. They can be found in the most recent publications.

Beardsley was so well known during his lifetime that his style was parodied several times in the English magazine Punch . These drawings, which can be regarded as caricatures (partly published under the pseudonym Daubaway Weirdsley around 1895) are stylistically closest to the real Beardsley graphics.

The retouched erotic Lysistrata illustrations that were reprinted in the book The later work of Aubrey Beardsley , Dover Publications , Inc., New York (1967 and later editions) cannot be described as falsifications, but at least as gross blemishes .

Works

The Fruit Bearers , illustration from the Savoy , 1896

In his short but very fruitful period as an illustrator of six years, Aubrey Vincent Beardsley over 1000  illustrations , cartoons (among others, Émile Zola , Felix Mendelssohn and Carl Maria von Weber ), book vignettes , bookplate , title pages , posters created and more , amongst other things:

Beardsley also worked on various art and literary magazines (such as The Yellow Book , The Studio , The Savoy ), such as the exemplary editions:

Examples of illustrations

  • Salome

  • The Apotheosis , illustration to Salome , published in The Studio , vol. 1, No. 1, 1893

  • The Toilet of Salome , 1893-1894

  • The Stomach Dance , illustration for Oscar Wilde's Salome , 1893–1894

  • The Dancer's Reward , 1893-1894

  • John and Salome , illustration for Salome , but not published until 1899

  • Alexander Pope and others

  • Venus between Terminal Gods , 1895

  • The Barge , illustration for The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope , 1896

  • The Billet-doux , illustration for The Rape of the Lock , 1896

  • The driving of Cupid from the garden , illustration for the Savoy (No. 3, July 1896)

  • Et in Arcadia Ego , drawing from the last issue of the Savoy , vol. 3, 1896

  • Lysistrata and later

  • Lysistrata stretched their enemy, the penis, an olive branch counter , frontispiece for the Lysistrata of Aristophanes , 1896

  • Lysistrata defends the Acropolis , 1896

  • The Inspection of the Herald (Pierrot), 1896

  • The ambassadors of Lacedaemonia (Lysistrata), 1896

  • Bathyllus taking the pose , 1896

  • Title page of an edition of One Thousand and One Nights , 1897

  • The Impatient Adulterer , 1897

literature

Masquerade , title design for the first edition of the Yellow Book , 1894

( in chronological order )

  • Arthur Symons : Aubrey Beardsley . At the Sign of the unicorn, London 1898 ( digitized version ).
  • The early work of Aubrey Beardsley. With a prefatory note from HC Marillier. John Lane, London and New York, 1899 ( digitized ).
  • The later work of Aubrey Beardsley . John Lane, London and New York 1900, again in 1911 and 1920 ( digitized ).
  • William Randolph Hearst : Aubrey Beardsley and the yellow book . John Lane, London and New York, 1903 ( digitized ).
  • Last letters of Aubrey Beardsley. With an introductory note by the Rev. John Gray . Longmans, Greene & Co., London 1904 ( digitized version ).
  • Robert Baldwin Ross : Aubrey Beardsley . With sixteen full page illustrations and a revised iconography by Aymer Vallance. John Lane, London and New York 1909 ( digitized ).
  • The art of Aubrey Beardsley . Introduction by Arthur Symons. Boni and Liveright, New York 1918 ( digitized ).
  • Eugen Skasa-Weiß : Beardsley. Drawings. With an introduction by Eugen Skasa-Weiß ( Buchheim's great art books ). Buchheim-Verlag, Feldafing 1968.
  • Gert Mattenklott : Picture service. Aesthetic opposition in Beardsley and George (series of passages ). Rogner & Bernhard, Munich 1970, again 1985. ISBN 3-920-80254-3 . - New edition: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1991. ISBN 3-434-46062-4 .
  • Bruno Mehrmann (Ed.): Beardsley - His graphic work . Two thousand and one, Frankfurt am Main 1975; later editions from 1979 under the title: The belly dance. 422 drawings .
  • Hans Hofstätter: Aubrey Beardsley, drawings . Cologne 1977.
  • Brian Reade: Beardsley . Gutenberg Book Guild, Frankfurt am Main 1967; second, revised edition, Hatje, Stuttgart 1980. ISBN 3-775-70150-8 .
  • Ursula Korn (Ed.): Aubrey Beardsley - Pierrot for a moment . Berlin 1984.
  • Peter Michelson: Speaking the Unspeakable. A poetics of obscenity . State University of New York Press, Albany / New York 1993. ISBN 0-7914-1223-7 .
  • Richard Dellamora: Victorian Sexual Dissidence . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1999. ISBN 0-226-14226-4 .
  • Emma Sutton: Aubrey Beardsley and British Wagnerism in the 1890s . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002. ISBN 0-19-818732-7 .
  • Stephen Prickett: Victorian Fantasy . Baylor University Press, Baylor / Texas 2005. ISBN 1-932792-30-9 .
  • Horst Schroeder: Franz Bleis alleged meeting with Aubrey Beardsley in Paris in 1897 . Berlin 2018 (private print).

Web links

Commons : Aubrey Beardsley  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Beardsley, Aubrey
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beardsley, Aubrey Vincent (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British illustrator, poet, graphic artist and caricaturist
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Brighton
DATE OF DEATH March 16, 1898
Place of death Menton , Alpes-Maritimes department , France