Aubrey beardsley art style

By Adam Hencz. Aubrey Beardsley — was a controversial English graphic artist and illustrator, who despite his tragically short life became a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement and is considered as the most influential master of Art Nouveau graphics. Due to recurrent attacks of tuberculosis throughout his life, he was often unable to study, draw, work or even leave his home.

Besides his continuously failing health, he lost his father and his fortune at an early age, which forced the Beardsleys to live in lodgings for the next twenty years, fending off poverty. Nevertheless, his mother cultivated the genteel talents of his two children in both music and literature. At the age of 16 Beardsley left school and obtained a job as a clerk in London to help his family make ends meet.

It was a very narrow existence for a cultured and ambitious young man. While browsing in bookshops in his lunch hour, he came across the work and life of the painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, that fuelled his hopes to become an artist. He spent the year learning about art, visiting galleries and exhibitions, and seeking excitement and progression.

This year, at the age of 18 he met painter Edward Burne-Jones, who praised his work and said he ought to go to art school. As a result, he attended Westminster School of Art in the evenings for about a year. Here, Beardsley discovered the graphic work of the designer and illustrator Walter Crane and received advice on line drawing in pen and ink.

Aubrey beardsley cause of death

His line block prints were also full of cultural references from ancient Greek vases and medieval woodcuts to illicit French literature. Beardsley knew Wilde through his friends Robert Ross, a journalist, and art critic, artist Will Rothenstein and caricaturist Max Beerbohm. Beardsley died just as he was becoming one of the most prominent graphic artists of his day, his brilliance and promise cut short by tuberculosis.