Aubrey Beardsley

Aubrey Beardsley scandalised late-Victorian society in his seven short years as an illustrator. By the time of his death from tuberculosis, aged only 25, his name had become a byword for depravity. Along with Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler, he was a leading light of the Aesthetic Movement. Having announced himself in 1893 with drawings for Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, he further cemented his reputation by illustrating Oscar Wilde’s Salome. His stark black ink drawings drew inspiration from Japanese Ukiyo-e prints and the posters of Toulouse-Lautrec. He co-founded the quarterly magazine The Yellow Book, which would define the visual tone of the 1890s. His humorous and deliberately grotesque depictions of erotica – often bordering on the openly pornographic – were a direct challenge to the repressive Victorian morality of his day. His influence on the Art Nouveau style and poster design was immense, while his illustrations still had the power to cause controversy as late as the 1960s.