Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (1872–1898) was a fashionable English illustrator and author associated with the aesthetic movement and the development of the art nouveau style. Known today and in his time as a master of black-ink line work executed with supple fluidity and slashing vigor, Beardsley veered away from Victorian convention, choosing instead to portray characters and scenes as he saw them. “Things shape themselves before my eyes just as I draw them. . . . They all seem weird and strange to me.” He asserted that “the grotesque is the only alternative to the insipid commonplace.” His fantastic illustrations expressed his appreciation of the unexpected, the erotic, the dark and decadent.
Although he struggled with ill-health throughout his brief life—he was diagnosed with tuberculosis as a child and died of the disease at twenty-five—Beardsley was a prolific and well-known artist, and by his early twenties was the art editor of The Yellow Book, an avant-garde literary quarterly. His audacious style influenced artists of diverse genres, and whether despite or because of its modish affectedness, Beardsley’s artwork continues to captivate audiences. This coloring book features a selection of twenty-five black-and-white illustrations published in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century versions of literary works such as Le Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory, The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope, and Salomé by Oscar Wilde.
