A maid servant living alone in a house not far from the river, had gone up-stairs to bed about eleven. From album cover designs to tattoo art, Beardsley’s influence is noticeable even today.Chapter 4: The Carew Murder Case NEARLY a year later, in the month of October, 18-, London was startled by a crime of singular ferocity and rendered all the more notable by the high position of the victim. In 1966 the V&A famously held a popular Aubrey Beardsley exhibition. Many artists were inspired by his distinct, subversive style. Thanks to a booming print and magazine culture, Beardsley became internationally famous in his lifetime. He created this drawing with the knowledge that it would be reproduced and circulated as a print, which is true of the vast majority of his artworks. Beardsley himself called pieces like this ‘embroideries’. ‘Decadents’ sought an escape from the 19th century world through fantastical imagery. Art like this is associated with Decadence in art. The ‘grotesque’ characters and objects weave in and out of each other, making it difficult to see where one ends and another begins. This drawing, The Cave of Spleen, is a small but incredibly detailed illustration made up of extremely thin lines and cross-hatching. Yet his artwork became more intricate than ever. By this point, the artist, at only age 25, was nearing the end of his life. A strange, but frequent 19th century perception of TB was that it went hand in hand with an obsession about sex.īeardsley illustrated Alexander Pope’s poem The Rape of the Lock in 1896.

Today we call ‘consumption’ Tuberculosis (or TB). Many people at the time thought that Beardsley’s obsession with erotic art came from the fact that he was young and ‘consumptive’. Beardsley was often deliberately trying to be provocative. But he failed to spot the penis-shaped candles the artist had drawn in the foreground, and the erection of the figure to the left.īeardsley’s obsession with the erotic played upon Victorian taboos. John Lane, who was Beardsley’s publisher, demanded that Beardsley cover the page on the right’s genitalia with a fig-leaf. Herodias’s breasts are exposed but she is covered by the large cloak. To the bottom right there is a caricature of Oscar Wilde holding a copy of Salome and gesturing up at his own play. Beardsley drew erotic and satirical images, some of which were entirely unrelated to the plot of play.Įnter Herodias shows the moment when Salome’s mother enters the stage. Wilde originally wrote the play in French, and he chose Beardsley to illustrate the English translation of the play. Enter Herodias is named after a stage direction in Oscar Wilde’s play Salome.

Strange Doorways by Paul Beardsley