BEARDSLEY, AUBREY VINCENT Eng lish artist in black and white, was born at Brighton on Aug. 24, 187 2. In 1883 his family settled in London, and in the following year he appeared in public as an "infant musical phenomenon." In 1888 he obtained a post in an architect's office. In 189i, under the advice of Sir Edward Burne Jones and Puvis de Chavannes, he took up art as a profession and attended classes at the West minster School of Art. From 1893 until his death, at Mentone, on March 16, 1898, his work met with a storm of criticism. Beards ley had an unswerving tendency towards the fantastic ; he deliber ately ignored proportion and per spective, and the freedom from convention which he displayed caused his work to be judged with harshness. In certain phases of technique he excelled, and his earlier methods of dealing with the single line in conjunction with masses of black are in their way unsurpassed, except in the art of Japan. He was always an ornamentalist rather than an illustrator ; and his work must be judged from that point of view. His frontispiece to Volpone is held by some to be, from this purely technical standpoint, one of the best pen-drawings of the age. His posters for the Avenue theatre and for Mr. Fisher Unwin were among the first of the modern cult of that art which at that time was by few regarded as such.
The following are the chief works which are illustrated with draw ings by Beardsley: the Bon Mot Library, The Pall Mall Budget, and The Studio (1893), Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur Salome (1894), The Yellow Book (1894-95), The Savoy Magazine (1896), The Rape of the Lock (1896).
See also J. Pennell, The Studio (1893) ; Symons, Aubrey Beardsley (1898) ; R. Ross, V olpone (1898) ; H. C. Marillier, The Early Work of Aubrey Beardsley (1899) ; Smithers, Reproductions of Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley; John Lane, The Later Works of Aubrey Beards ley (i 9oi) ; R. Ross, Aubrey Beardsley 0908).