AUBREY BEARDSLEY
(1872-1898)
 

Frontispiece for Venus and Tannhäuser
1895
pen and ink on paper
21.9 x 17.8 cm
inscribed: Venus

 P.225

This beautiful drawing, executed in 1895, was made as a frontispiece to Beardsley’s unfinished erotic novel Venus and Tannhäuser (a version of the medieval legend of Venus, goddess of love, and the knight Tannhäuser) which was later published as Under the Hill in The Savoy, nos.1 & 2, 1896.     

Critics have seen this drawing as exemplifying the new order and classicism that Beardsley introduced into his art after his dismissal from The Yellow Book. Yet the seemingly idealised and placid Venus, set against the profuse and sprawling foliage behind her, creates a tension between them which is one of the drawing’s strengths.

Although largely self-taught, Beardsley achieved a mastery of black and white line drawing unequalled in its balance of space and telling detail. His vision, as much as Wilde’s writings, has shaped our image of the decadence of the 1890s.

Beardsley died of tuberculosis aged only twenty-five. 

EJ

PROVENANCE: Messrs. H. Henry & Co. Ltd; John Lane Esq.; Herbert Charles Pollitt (1871-1942); purchased by the Gallery from Matthiesen Ltd, December 1957.

EXHIBITIONS: Paris Exposition, 1900, no.20; Aubrey Beardsley, London, V&A and Manchester, Manchester City Art Gallery, Bradford, Bradford Art Gallery, Southampton, Southampton University, 1966, no. 441; Aubrey Beardsley, New York, The Gallery of Modern Art, 1967, no.180; The English Tradition, an exhibition of watercolours from two private collections, Bedford, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, 1972, no.4; Het Symbolisme in Europa, Rotterdam, Baden-Baden & Paris, 1976, no.4; Aubrey Beardsley:An Exhibition for Japan, Kawasaki Museum, Wakayama Art Gallery, Hokkaido Museum and Gunma Museum, 1998, no.135.

REFERENCES: A. Vallance A Book of Fifty Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley, 1897, p.209; A.E. Gallatin, Aubrey Beardsley’s drawings: A Catalogue, 1903, p.34; L. Smithers, A Second book of Fifty Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley, 1899, p.179; H. MacFall, Aubrey Beardsley: The Man and His Work, 1928, pp.72,74-7; H. Wölfflin, Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art, 1932, p.159; R. Walker, The Best of Beardsley, 1948, p.44; W. Sypher, Rococo to Cubism in Art and Literature, 1960, p.27; B. Reade, Collection of the Greatest Works of Aubrey Beardsley, 1966, p.9; C. Brinitzer, Immer Arger mit den Frauen, 1973, p.188; I. Fletcher, Aubrey Beardsley, 1987, p.251; L. Zatlin, Aubrey Beardsley and Victorian Sexual Politics, 1990, illus. p.108; A. Reid, Beardsley, 1991, p.78; C. Snodgrass, Aubrey Beardsley: Dandy of the Grotesque, 1995, p.149

Copyright © Trustees of Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford.

Extract taken from Watercolours and Drawings, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery by Evelyn Joll.