Beardsley, Aubrey Vincent (1872-1898), was an English book and magazine illustrator. His style is typical of an art movement of the 1890’s called Art Nouveau.
Beardsley’s designs are elegant and decorative, with flowing lines, exaggerated human figures, and large contrasting areas of black and white. Many of his drawings are fantastic or grotesque, emphasizing the cruel or erotic (sexually stimulating) qualities he saw in his subjects. Beardsley often portrayed the world as a frightening and overwhelming place. For example, his pictures for the published version of Oscar Wilde’s play Salome (1894) show women who are tall, alluring, and threatening.
Beardsley was born on Aug. 21, 1872, in Brighton (now Brighton and Hove), England. He was a sickly child and began to suffer seriously from tuberculosis when he was 16 years old. Beardsley’s first major work consisted of more than 500 drawings for a new edition (1892, 1894) of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur.
Beardsley was art editor of the magazine The Yellow Book and helped found another magazine called Savoy. Many of his drawings first appeared in these periodicals. Beardsley’s fiction was collected and published as Under the Hill in 1904, after his death. Beardsley died of tuberculosis at the age of 25, on March 16, 1898.
