Artist · 38 prints
Aubrey Beardsley Prints
About Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Beardsley was an English illustrator, born in Brighton on 21 August 1872 and died in Menton, France, on 16 March 1898, aged just 25. He drew from early childhood while working as a clerk. After meeting the painter Edward Burne-Jones in 1891, he took evening classes at the Westminster School of Art for a few months, the only formal training he ever had.
Beardsley worked almost entirely in black ink, with elegant curving lines and bold flat areas that owe a lot to Japanese woodcuts. His first big commission was Malory's Le Morte Darthur (1893–94). In 1894 his drawings for Oscar Wilde's Salomé made him famous overnight, and the same year he became art editor of The Yellow Book, a post he lost in 1895 after the Wilde scandal. Later came The Rape of the Lock and Lysistrata (both 1896). In just a few years Aubrey Beardsley helped define the look of Art Nouveau in print.
Aubrey Beardsley prints: reproductions of the black-and-white Art Nouveau illustrations and posters Aubrey Beardsley drew between 1891 and 1897. The collection includes Salome: The Peacock Skirt (1893), Le Morte Darthur: How Queen Guenever Made Her a Nun (1894), The Battle of the Beaux and the Belles (1896), The Black Cat (1894) and the poster for The Yellow Book, Volume IV (1895).
This selection concentrates on his book illustrations: many plates from Le Morte Darthur, the Salome drawings, his designs for Edgar Allan Poe's tales, and his work for The Rape of the Lock and The Savoy. It also includes several of his posters and cover designs. Most works are pure black ink on white, with dense patterned borders, flowers and long sweeping lines.
The strong black-and-white contrast suits hallways, studies, reading rooms and libraries, and a group of the Morte Darthur plates hangs well as a series. All prints are museum-quality reproductions, available unframed or framed with low-glare acrylic glazing, with free shipping and import duties covered.
