Aubrey Beardsley
The Yellow Book
Salome

Aubrey Beardsley is best known for his Art in the Yellow Book and Salome.

Beardsley was born in Brighton, England on 21 August 1872. Both he and his sister Mabel were said to be artistic and musical prodigies.

Although from upper class origins, Beardsley's family was nearly destitute after his father lost their inherited fortune.

Their earnings were meager while their father worked irregularly in London breweries and their mother gave piano lessons.

He had tuberculosis at nine and caused him serious difficulties through life as well as being the cause for his death.

After their mother fell ill, him and his sister went to live with their aunt in 1884, and studied at Bristol Grammar school.

In 1888, he worked in an architect’s office and in 1889 worked as a clerk in an insurance office in London.

In 1891, he began art as a profession and in 1892; he attended classes under Professor Fred Brown at Westminster School of Art.

Allied with the Yellow Book, coterie of artists and writers, he was an art editor for the first four additions of the magazine.

He was also closely allied with Aestheticism, the British equal of Symbolism.

Most of Beardsley’s art was done in ink. The artwork featured dark areas against large white or blank ones.

He was the most divisive artist of the Art Nouveau age. Most of his art consisted of perverse and dark images and bizarre erotica.

This was mostly in his later work.

Beardsley’s most famous erotica were his images of mythology and history. He also did art for a play written by Oscar Wilde called Salome.

Beardsley also did artwork for a few well-known magazines and books. He worked for magazines like The Savoy and The studio.

In addition to his artwork, Aubrey Beardsley wrote an erotic tale loosely based on Tannhauser. He did some political cartoons as well.

He influenced many including artists from around the same era, Pape and Clarke.

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 associated with homosexuals that included Oscar Wilde. Although he found himself in the company of several homosexuals, his sexual orientation is unknown.

It was rumored that he had an incestuous affair with his older sister Mable. She was thought to have been pregnant by him and miscarried.

However, Aubrey Beardsley had a short life and was nursed by his mother until the end of his days after she had recovered.

Beardsley was active right up until his death on March 16, 1898 at the age of 25.

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