Beardsley

"Lady in long dress"

At the age of seven Beardsley was diagnosed with tuberculosis, which many see as a possible explanation for his unbridled urge to express himself. Without any education in arts he developed his passionate style of drawing, averse to the social and political equalization, and not being socially engaged as many of his contemporaries. Beardsley admired the pre-Raphaelites’ traditional, distant style and the thought provoking two-dimensional Japanese art of drawing, which subsequently had a sexual lack of inhibition which was unthinkable in prudish Victorian England. Along the lines of the Fin-de- Siècle he cultivated ugliness to a ruthless aestheticism of deca dence, like Beaudelaire did in his Fleurs du mal. In his own words: “I struck out a new style and method of work which was founded on Japanese art but quite original. (It is) extremely fantastic in conception but perfectly severe in execution”. The Studio magazine published his drawings which earned him more recognition, but certainly yielded no wide recognition. It did give him the opportunity to resign from his job at the office and devote himself entirely to the art of drawing. He got assignments for book illustrations and got involved with the successful artistic literary magazine The yellow Book. In 1896 he and the formal solicitor Smithers founded the magazine The Savoy. Two years later he died of tuberculosis.