Aubrey Beardsley: The Complete Story
Aubrey Beardsley was an English illustrator who, in about six years of work, became the most famous and most scandalous artist of the 1890s. He drew in pure black ink, no color and no shading, and he was dead of tuberculosis at 25. In that short span he illustrated Oscar Wilde’s Salome, edited The Yellow Book, and pushed his sinuous black line straight into Art Nouveau, making him the defining look of the Decadent 1890s.
His images are instantly recognizable: elegant, sinister, full of long curving lines, huge areas of flat black and white, and a streak of dark, sometimes obscene humor. He turned book illustration into shock art.
In a few short years he scandalized Victorian England, got tangled up in the downfall of Oscar Wilde, and changed the look of the printed page forever. Here is the whole story.
The world he exploded into: the Decadent 1890s
Beardsley arrived in a very particular moment. The 1890s in London were the age of Decadence and Aestheticism, the era of art for art's sake, when a defiant set of writers and artists prized beauty, artifice and a whiff of scandal over Victorian moral lessons.
Oscar Wilde was its star. Beardsley became its visual voice, the artist who could make a drawing feel as wicked and witty as a Wilde epigram.
His work also rides the same wave as Symbolism, which prized mood, myth and suggestion over plain storytelling. He gave that mood a sharp, modern edge.
The line no one else could draw
No artist looks quite like him. A few things give a Beardsley away at a glance.
Black and white only. No color, no soft shading. Just pure black ink against blank white paper.
The balance of empty and full. Huge areas of plain black or plain white, set against one corner crammed with fine detail.
The line. Long, sinuous, confident outlines that seem drawn in a single breath.
The hidden jokes. Look closely and you find sly, often obscene details smuggled into the decoration.
There was a hard practical reason for the stark black and white. It reproduced perfectly in cheap magazines and books through the new line block printing, so his art could reach thousands at low cost. Like the best poster artists, he designed for the machine age.
From Japanese prints to Greek vases
Beardsley was largely self taught, but he was a sponge for other art.
The Pre Raphaelite Edward Burne Jones saw his drawings and personally encouraged him to become an artist, a turning point for the young clerk. From the American painter Whistler he took elegance and the love of empty space.
His two deepest debts are older and stranger. He studied Japanese prints, borrowing their flat shapes and stark asymmetry, and he pored over ancient Greek vase paintings, with their pure outline figures. He fused East, West and the antique into something brand new.
Salome and the Oscar Wilde scandal
His breakthrough was also his great controversy. In 1894 he illustrated the English edition of Oscar Wilde's play Salome, a lurid retelling of the Bible story.
Beardsley's drawings were erotic, grotesque and barbed. He even slipped caricatures of Wilde himself into the images, and hid so many rude details that the publisher made him redo several plates.
The pictures became more famous than the play. They also tied Beardsley's name to Wilde in the public mind, which was about to become very dangerous.
The Yellow Book and the fall
In 1894 Beardsley became art editor of a provocative new magazine, The Yellow Book, and his covers made it the most talked about publication in London.
Then, in 1895, Wilde was arrested. Newspapers reported he was carrying a yellow book under his arm. It was actually a French novel, not the magazine, but the public did not care about the difference.
In the panic, the publisher fired Beardsley to protect The Yellow Book, even though he had no part in Wilde's private life. He was punished for a guilt by association, and at 22 his great platform was gone.
The line that never died
For someone who worked only a few years, his reach is staggering. His sinuous line fed straight into Art Nouveau, the decorative style of around 1900.
For me no one ever bent a single black line further than Beardsley did.
Decades later his look came roaring back. The psychedelic poster artists of the 1960s adored him, and his influence runs on into gothic art, fashion, tattoo design and even Japanese manga. The obscene drawings he begged his publisher to burn are now among the most reproduced images of the 1890s.
The short, driven life
Beardsley was born in 1872 in Brighton, a frail, brilliant child who was also a gifted pianist. Tuberculosis was diagnosed when he was a boy, and he grew up knowing his time would be short.
He worked as an insurance clerk while drawing obsessively at night. Once Burne Jones encouraged him, his rise was almost vertical: within a few years he went from unknown clerk to the most notorious artist in England.
He drew with ferocious speed, as if racing the illness. In effect, he was.
How Aubrey Beardsley died
The tuberculosis caught up with him fast. By his mid twenties he was desperately ill, and he moved to the warmer south of France hoping to recover.
Near the end he converted to Catholicism, and in a now famous letter he begged his publisher to destroy his obscene drawings, including the Lysistrata series. The publisher ignored him, which is the only reason those works survive.
He died in Menton, in the south of France, in 1898, aged just 25.
Kept in the print rooms
Because he worked on paper, his drawings are kept in print rooms and shown in rotation rather than hung permanently. A few places hold the best of him.
The Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Holds a major collection of his drawings and is the key Beardsley stop.
Tate Britain, London. Strong holdings and the site of landmark Beardsley exhibitions.
The Met, New York. The best place to find him in the United States.
Two good homes online are the Victoria and Albert Museum and Tate.
Beardsley in black and white, answered
What is he known for? Black and white illustrations, especially for Oscar Wilde's Salome.
What medium did he use? Pen and black ink on paper, made for printing.
Was he linked to Oscar Wilde? Professionally yes, through Salome, and he was unfairly caught up in Wilde's scandal.
How did he die? Of tuberculosis, in France, in 1898, aged 25.
Is it Aubrey or someone else? The artist is Aubrey Beardsley. The reality TV and zoo of the same surname are unrelated.
If Beardsley's dark elegance pulled you in, try these next:
Alphonse Mucha, the other turn of the century master who turned line into a whole style.
Gustav Klimt, who fused decoration, desire and gold in Vienna.
7 Secrets Hidden in Famous Paintings, for anyone who loves hunting the rude jokes Beardsley hid in his work.
The Brighton boy who was already sick at seven
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was born in Brighton on 21 August 1872. As a small child he was known less for drawing than for music. He and his older sister Mabel performed as a musical pair, and Aubrey was a gifted young pianist.
The illness that would kill him arrived early. By most accounts he showed the first signs of tuberculosis around the age of seven. It was the disease of the era, slow and returning, and it shadowed every year of his short working life. He built a career knowing his time was measured.
Ledgers by day, ink in the evening
Beardsley did not start as a full time artist. Around 1889 he took a clerk's job in London, most notably at the Guardian Life and Fire Insurance Company. He copied figures into ledgers for a modest wage.
He drew constantly outside those hours, teaching himself by copying and inventing. He was largely self taught, and the office years show how close he came to never being an artist at all. The desk job was the safe path his health and income seemed to demand.
The afternoon that changed his mind
In July 1891 Beardsley and Mabel visited the older painter Edward Burne Jones at his home in Fulham. Beardsley brought a portfolio of drawings. Burne Jones, tied to the Pre Raphaelite circle, looked through them and told the young man he clearly had a future in art and should train seriously.
That encouragement was the turning point. Beardsley soon enrolled in evening classes at the Westminster School of Art under Frederick Brown. It was close to the only formal instruction he ever received.
Hundreds of drawings for the knights of the Round Table
His first large commission came in 1892 from the publisher J. M. Dent, who wanted an illustrated edition of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. It was a huge job for a beginner. Beardsley produced hundreds of designs, including full page plates, borders, chapter openings and decorated initials, issued in parts across 1893 and 1894.
The style leaned on the medieval look of William Morris and his Kelmscott Press. Morris was reportedly not pleased to see his manner echoed. The project put Beardsley's name in front of the London art world for the first time.
Art editor before he turned twenty two
In April 1894 a new quarterly appeared: The Yellow Book, published by John Lane at The Bodley Head. Its yellow cover was meant to echo the wrapped French novels of the day. Beardsley was its first art editor, working alongside the literary editor Henry Harland.
He was around twenty one when the first volume came out. His black and white drawings gave the magazine its face, and the whole enterprise quickly became a symbol of the decade the press liked to call decadent. For a young man from an insurance desk, it was a sudden climb.
The dance that unsettled the printers
Oscar Wilde wrote his play Salome in French, and an English translation appeared in 1894, published by Elkin Mathews and John Lane. Beardsley supplied the illustrations. His images of the biblical dancer and the severed head of John the Baptist were sensual, strange and deliberately provocative.
Several drawings were judged indecent and were held back or replaced with tamer versions. Beardsley slipped small caricatures of Wilde himself into a few of the designs. The two men were never easy collaborators, and Wilde is reported to have found the pictures too Japanese for his taste.
The yellow book that was not The Yellow Book
When Wilde was arrested in April 1895, newspapers reported that he carried a yellow book under his arm. Many readers assumed it was The Yellow Book magazine. In fact it was almost certainly a French novel in a yellow paper wrapper, most likely a work by Pierre Louys. The two things simply looked alike.
The confusion did real damage. A crowd is said to have thrown stones at the windows of The Bodley Head. Authors on Lane's list pressured the publisher to cut ties with anyone linked to Wilde and to scandal. Beardsley, who was not even close to Wilde personally, was dismissed as art editor of The Yellow Book. He lost the post that had made his name.
A second magazine, and a publisher who did not flinch
The dismissal could have ended him. Instead the publisher Leonard Smithers, who specialized in work other houses feared, gave him a new home. In January 1896 Smithers launched The Savoy, edited by the critic Arthur Symons, with Beardsley as art editor and a leading contributor.
The magazine ran for eight numbers across 1896. Beardsley drew for it and also wrote, including part of his unfinished tale Under the Hill. It was his most productive stretch even as his lungs kept failing.
A late conversion and a last request
Near the end Beardsley turned to faith. He was received into the Roman Catholic Church on 31 March 1897. As his health collapsed, that new devotion seems to have reshaped how he saw his own work.
From his sickbed in early 1898 he wrote to Smithers begging him to destroy all copies of his erotic Lysistrata drawings, made for Aristophanes' comedy, and, in his words, all obscene drawings. Smithers did not obey, and the images survive. Beardsley died of tuberculosis on 16 March 1898 at Menton in the south of France. He was 25.