Art Exhibition: ‘Fancy and Imagination: Beardsley and the Book Illustrators’

• ‘Fancy and Imagination: Beardsley and the Book Illustrators’
• Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, Parkinson Building
• 16 November 2010 – 12 February 2011
• Free Admision

How La Beale Isoud Nursed Sir Tristram, from Le Morte d'Arthur, by Aubrey Beardsley, 1894, University of Leeds Special Collections

A new exhibition detailing the life and work of Aubrey Beardsley opens at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery this week, showcasing various examples of work from one of the most eminent illustrators at the end of the Nineteenth Century. Set in context with other artists of the time (Arthur Rackham, Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway and Jessie M King), the exhibition also focuses on the abundance of illustration between 1890 and the 1920s, and Beardsley’s fundamental place within this much wider arena.

Beardsley’s work is uniform, using a simple palette of black and white to depict fantasy scenes, extravagantly dressed females and magical situations. Each piece of work is incredibly detailed, (Beardsley often used tiny dots to build up the individual pictures), and this precision is representative of the time that was dedicated to each illustration. The majority of the items in the exhibition have come from the Fay and Geoffrey Elliot Collection, one of the motives behind this donation being to allow a wider audience the chance to see this type of work for the first time.

For a man whose work was purely monochrome, Beardsley’s life was incredibly colourful. Born in 1872 in Brighton, Beardsley’s abilities were obvious from a young age, both Aubrey and his sister Mabel were considered artistic and musical geniuses, and this early potential flourished into an incredible career. In his early twenties, he was asked to create 300 illustrations for Dent Publishers, he began to edit The Yellow Book, and even worked alongside Oscar Wilde. Unfortunately this association later proved damaging; when Wilde was imprisoned in 1895, Beardsley was sacked and ostracized from the publishing world. However he later found work with Leonard Smithers, a pornographer, and this collaboration continued until the end of Beardsley’s life when he died from tuberculosis, at the premature age of twenty-five.

And although his life was cut incredibly short, Beardsley’s compacted years still managed to make a dramatic impact on the world of illustration, providing a precedent for the work of numerous future artists. His is a body of work that should be seen, studied and celebrated, up close and in detail, on numerous occasions, and this new exhibition allows you the chance to do so.