Aubrey Beardsley (1872 – 1898)
English illustrator whose black-and-white ink drawings influenced the development of the Art Nouveau style.
Superbly premature as the flowering of his genius was, still he had immense development, and had not sounded his last stop. There were great possibilities in the cavern of his soul, and there is something macabre and tragic in the fact that one who added another terror to life should have died at the age of a flower.
The poster first of all justified its existence on the grounds of utility, and should it further aspire to beauty of line and colour, may not our hoardings claim kinship with the galleries, and the designers of affiches pose proudly in the public eye as the masters of Holland Road or Bond Street Barbizon (and, recollect, no gate money, no catalogue)?
Of course, I have one aim, the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing.
I think the title page I drew for Salomé was after all "impossible". You see booksellers couldn't stick it up in their windows.
Oscar loved purple and gold, Aubrey put everything down in black and white. And while every connoisseur declared that line of the artist superb, there were others who deplored that he did not know where to draw it.
There was a young man with a salary,
Who had to do drawings for Malory;
When they asked him for more,
He replied, 'Why? Sure
You've enough as it is for a gallery.'