Aubrey Beardsley

Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898), English artist, whose sensitive, highly imaginative style and hedonistic, occasionally macabre subject matter place him within the European fin-de-siècle artistic movement. In his short life (his productive career spanned only six years), Beardsley achieved a reputation as one of England's most innovative illustrators.

Beardsley, born in Brighton, briefly attended the Westminster School of Art in London. Other than this short stint of formal training, he was self-taught. By the age of 20 he was executing art commissions. Characteristic of his work are large areas of black and white, hard, curving lines, rich ornamentation, and disregard of conventional perspective and proportion. Recognizable influences include the great Japanese printmakers and the pre-Raphaelite painters. The fantastic and occasionally erotic nature of his illustrations aroused great controversy.

Beardsley was art editor of the celebrated periodical The Yellow Book (1894-1895) and of The Savoy (1896); both of these publications featured his work. He illustrated editions of Morte d'Arthur (1893-1894), written by Sir Thomas Malory in 1469-1470; Salomé (1894) by Oscar Wilde; The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (1894-1895); Lysistrata (1896), written by Aristophanes in 411 bc; and Volpone (1898), written by Ben Jonson in 1606. He also designed posters and wrote fiction and poetry, which was collected and published posthumously as Under the Hill (1904). A lifelong victim of tuberculosis, he died in Menton, France, at age 25. His distinctive style remained a powerful influence on graphic design in Europe and the United States.