Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography [Hardcover]

Matthew Sturgis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1999

The brilliant and brief life of the prodigiously talented, turn-of-the-century English artist, written by a renowned journalist and historian. 28 photos. 30 line drawings.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Diagnosed with tuberculosis at age 7, the talk of London before he turned 22, and dead at 25, Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) was a textbook example of the doomed artist he and his fellow decadents admired so much. British journalist and art critic Matthew Sturgis paints an evocative picture of the cultural milieu that shaped Beardsley, with its ferocious rivalry between the idealistic Pre-Raphaelites and the more sardonic English impressionists, who ultimately claimed Beardsley's loyalty (though the ambitious teenager initially gained the patronage of Pre-Raphaelite Edward Burne-Jones). The author's portrait of Beardsley is equally vivid, limning both his dandified affectations and underlying sweetness, his dedication to art and the distaste for sustained work that made him the despair of his publishers. Beardsley's unique black-and-white drawings--perfect for the new technology of mass reproduction--made a sensation, first with the commissioned artwork for Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur and Wilde's Salome, then in the bold periodical he founded with friends, The Yellow Book. But Wilde's trial for gross indecency tainted Beardsley (though Sturgis's take is that he was more likely a virgin than a homosexual); he was fired from The Yellow Book; and his tuberculosis worsened along with his commercial prospects. The author depicts his subject's agonized final months with the same judicious sympathy he trains on "The Beardsley Boom" of 1894. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly

In this informative life of Beardsley, the great turn-of-the-century illustrator, limner of impossibly elongated, imperious femmes fatales and fey androgynes, Sturgis captures both his precocious subject's rise to infamy and the cultural changes that made it possible. Like Oscar Wilde, Beardsley was a leading member of the Decadent movement in England during the 1890s. Together they shocked the press and the establishment by cultivating the pose of dandies, coolly removed from prevailing social mores, and took aim at the dominant figures of the late 19th-century art world: moralizing critic John Ruskin and the sentimental pre-Raphaelite painters. That Beardsley met an early death at the age of 25 after a lifelong battle with tuberculosis was especially ironic, as the cult of the doomed youth was central to the Decadent movement. Throughout, Sturgis is in full command of the cultural conditions that led to Beardsley's emergence as an enfant terrible, such as the newly available illustrated picture press that made the artist's deliberately shocking drawings easily available to the masses and turned him into a media-art star avant la lettre. Sturgis never resorts to flimsy psychological conjecture (although his circumspection may in part be due to Beardsley's own efforts to fashion an elaborate mask for public consumption), and the biographer's prose is unexpectedly affecting when the end comes for his subject, as Beardsley rushes from spa to sanitarium, searching for a cure, frantically taking up and abandoning projects all the while. Arriving as it does in the midst of our own surface-obsessed fin de siecle, Sturgis's solid biography is not only a faithful record of Beardsley and of his world but also a useful study of the birth pangs of modernity. 26 b&w photographs and Beardsley's line drawings throughout.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 405 pages
• Publisher: Overlook Hardcover (January 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 087951910X
• ISBN-13: 978-0879519100
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,147,008 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Beardsley Biography, September 7, 2000

By 

Shana L. Snyder (New Brunswick, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography (Hardcover)

Matthew Sturgis' biography of the short-lived pen and ink master of black and white imagery provides an informative and elegantly written life of Art Noveau figure Aubrey Beardsley. Discussions of Beardsley's early years, meetings with famous figures like Oscar Wilde and James Whistler, Yellow Book fame, and last years full of physical decline are covered with intelligent attention to detail. Also included are several reproductions of Beardsley's illustrations and the critical response to them. The book is a fast read that is accessible to those not overly familiar with the man and the period, and is also interesting to the fin-de-siecle conoisseur.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect for the Budding Beardsleyite, March 20, 2004

By 

Danielle Bennignus - See all my reviews

This review is from: Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography (Hardcover)

Among the myriad biographies on Aubrey Beardsley, I have to say that this one stands out. Thorough, in depth and a quick read, it covers his life, work and complex personality perfectly. Although I have enjoyed immensely many other books about the man, I feel that this one provides a great starting point. From Beardsley's birth in Brighton to his untimely death in Menton, his tragic story is told with warmth, pathos and the great knowledge of a man clearly admiring of his subject. This book will open your eyes to new and startling truths about Beardsley and his work, if you have been convinced that his life was one of wanton decadence and sexual excess. What a surprise to learn that this clearly was not the case - rather, Beardsley was a most conservative man. I have for many years admired him and his work greatly, and am personally very thankful that Sturgis wrote this book.
For those more interested in a review of Beardsley's work, I'd suggest Chris Snodgrass' book, Aubrey Beardsley, Dandy of the Grotesque. It stands as a perfect companion to Sturgis' biography.