Aubrey Beardsley

1872–1898

In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Rooms

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Biography

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (21 August 1872 – 16 March 1898) was a British illustrator and author. His drawings in black ink, influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James 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.

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Artworks

Left Right

Aubrey Beardsley The Fat Woman

1894

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Aubrey Beardsley Cover Design for the ‘Yellow Book’

1894

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Aubrey Beardsley Design for the Frontispiece to John Davidson’s Plays

1894

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Aubrey Beardsley Messalina and her Companion

1895

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Aubrey Beardsley La Dame aux Camelias

1894

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Aubrey Beardsley Caprice. Verso: Masked Woman with a White Mouse

c.1894
Aubrey Beardsley Professor Fred Brown

1892

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Aubrey Beardsley Frontispiece to Chopin’s Third Ballade

1895

Artist as subject

Walter Richard Sickert Aubrey Beardsley

1894
Anita Bartle, Grant Richards (London, UK) This is my Birthday

1902

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Prunella Clough Diary

18 November 1944–27 February 1947

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Ithell Colquhoun Part of a typescript for an essay entitled: ‘Recollection of Kurt Schwitters’ by Ithell Colquhoun

1969

Features

Art Term

Fin de Siècle

Fin de Siècle is a French phrase meaning 'end of century' and is applied specifically as a historical term to …
Art Term

Art nouveau

Art nouveau is an international style in architecture and design that emerged in the 1890s and is characterised by sinuous …
Art Term

Decadence

Decadence generally refers to an extreme manifestation of symbolism which appeared towards the end of the nineteenth century and emphasised …
Tate Papers

'Poor abraded butterflies of the stage': Sickert and the Brighton Pierrots

Nicola Moorby

Sickert's interest in popular entertainment extended beyond the London music-hall and his 1915 painting Brighton Pierrots depicts a troupe of …
Tate Etc

Prisoners of love: Early bondage

James Hall

English visual art contains a wealth of bondage imagery, particularly from Aubrey Beardsley, the master of the whiplash line. James …