March 16: On This Day in World History … briefly

1898:  Brilliant, but shocking young London illustrator dies

English illustrator and author Aubrey Beardsley dies at the tender age of 25 – at the height of his career. His drawings in black ink, influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasised 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 patent leather pumps.

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 rumours of an incestuous relationship with his elder sister Mabel, who may have become pregnant by her brother and miscarried. During his entire career, Beardsley had recurrent attacks of tuberculosis. He suffered frequent lung haemorrhages and was often unable to work or leave his home.

He co-founded ‘The Yellow Book’ with American writer Henry Harland, and for the first four editions he served as art editor and produced the cover designs and many illustrations for the magazine. He was also closely aligned with Aestheticism, the British counterpart of Decadence and Symbolism. Most of his images are done in ink and feature large dark areas contrasted with large blank ones, and areas of fine detail contrasted with areas with none at all.

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 illustrations 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.

Beardsley converted to Roman Catholicism in March 1897, and subsequently begged his publisher, Leonard Smithers and close friend Herbert Charles Pollitt, to ‘destroy all copies of Lysistrata and bad drawings… by all that is holy all obscene drawings.’ Both men ignored Beardsley’s wishes, and Smithers actually continued to sell reproductions as well as forgeries of Beardsley’s work.

In 1897, deteriorating health prompted his move to the French Riviera where he died a year later on March 16, 1898, of tuberculosis at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Menton, France, attended by his mother and sister. He was just 25 years old. Following a Requiem Mass in Menton Cathedral the following day, his remains were interred in the adjacent cemetery.

Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.

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