Detail of a portrait of Aubrey Beardsley by photographer Frederick Evans, circa 1894. Evans helped Beardsley get his first commission, to illustrate a new edition of Thomas Malory’s “Le Morte d'Arthur.”
Detail of a portrait of Aubrey Beardsley by photographer Frederick Evans, circa 1894. Evans helped Beardsley get his first commission, to illustrate a new edition of Thomas Malory’s “Le Morte d'Arthur.”

For someone who died at 25, Aubrey Beardsley left quite a mark. His fluid, unsettling compositions in black and white, all dating to six years in the 1890s, are the graphic analogue to Oscar Wilde’s plays: unabashed expressions of the Aesthetic sensibility. That Beardlsey worked in an architect’s office before turning to illustration should be evident from the confident line and composition in drawings such as The Dream (1896, below). The borderline-grotesque sensuality of the images, however, stems from Beardsley’s own fertile imagination. The artist’s first major show in 50 years is on view at Tate Britain in London through May 25.

The subject of Aubrey Beardsley’s drawing “The Dream,” in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, derives from a passage in Alexander Pope’s poem, “The Rape of the Lock”: “Twas he has summon'd to her silent Bed / The Morning Dream that hover’d o’er her Head. / A Youth more glitt’ring than a Birth-Night Beau. . . .”
The J. Paul Getty Museum The subject of Aubrey Beardsley’s drawing “The Dream,” in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, derives from a passage in Alexander Pope’s poem, “The Rape of the Lock”: “Twas he has summon'd to her silent Bed / The Morning Dream that hover’d o’er her Head. / A Youth more glitt’ring than a Birth-Night Beau. . . .”
“Volpone Adoring His Treasure,” an Aubrey Beardsley drawing in Harvard’s Fogg Museum, portrays the deceitful title character in the comedy by Jacobean playwright Ben Johnson.
“Volpone Adoring His Treasure,” an Aubrey Beardsley drawing in Harvard’s Fogg Museum, portrays the deceitful title character in the comedy by Jacobean playwright Ben Johnson.
For Aubrey Beardsley’s most famous work, “The Climax,” he reworked one of his infamous illustrations for the Oscar Wilde play “Salomé.” Depicted in a style that owes much to Japanese woodblock prints, the famous dancing daughter of Herod II kisses the severed head of John the Baptist.
Marcus leith For Aubrey Beardsley’s most famous work, “The Climax,” he reworked one of his infamous illustrations for the Oscar Wilde play “Salomé.” Depicted in a style that owes much to Japanese woodblock prints, the famous dancing daughter of Herod II kisses the severed head of John the Baptist.
A pen and ink-wash self-portrait of Aubrey Beardsley, in the collection of the British Museum.
A pen and ink-wash self-portrait of Aubrey Beardsley, in the collection of the British Museum.

This article appears in the Feb. 2020 print issue of ARCHITECT, with the title, “The Line of Beauty.”