Museum Quality Artifacts
Exceptional Estate Sale
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (1872-1898)
Original signed pen & ink drawing
'The Dancer's Reward'
Size : 12.8" x 9.8" (32 x 24,5 cm)
Depicting Salomé, enveloped in a long black robe adorned with roses and with a clasp made of roses and extravagantly curled hair, in front of a high circular table on which lies the severed and bloody head of John the Baptist. Salomé grasps some of his hair in her right hand so the head is tilted back and she gazes upon it. There is a pair of slippers, presumably Salomé's, in the lower right hand corner of the image.
This drawing was originally part of the illustrations he made for Oscar Wilde's 'Salomé' but due to the very detailed ink lines this drawing was unsuitable for printing/publishing in book form and was withdrawn. Look at the incredible ink lines in Salomé's dress and you understand why.
Handsigned on the reverse side BEARDSLEY
In 1907 John Lane issued a portfolio of designs that Aubrey Beardsley created in 1894 for the first British edition of "Salomé." Oscar Wilde's play had been written in French in 1891 then translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas. Several of the images Beardsley submitted were judged to be too erotic to publish, and either altered or omitted. All were, however, included in the 1907 set except the original Dancer's Reward.
This drawing was kept aside for decades and handed over to Alpheus Hyatt Mayor, an American art historian and curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a leading figure in the study of prints, both old master prints and popular prints. Hyatt Mayor made a gift to the Met in 1963 of the complete portfolio of Aubrey Beardsley's drawings illustrating Salomé by Oscar Wilde, published in 1907 by the same John Lane, the Bodley Head.
How this original drawing came into the possession of the Sidney Janis Gallery is unknown but the COA issued by this Gallery is stating that they acquired the drawing from a New York family who's name was requested to be kept secret.
This is THE unique final phase drawing on ivorycolor
wove paper
NOT the ink drawing Aubrey Beardsley made for
woodblock printing !!
!! In absolute MINT condition !!
With provenance documentation and COA
from the Sidney Janis Gallery - New York
(only available to the new owner) !
Info on Aubrey Beardsley :
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (21 August 1872 – 16 March 1898) was an English illustrator and author. His drawings, done in black ink and influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A. McNeill Whistler. Beardsley's contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau and poster styles was significant, despite the brevity of his career before his early death from tuberculosis.
Beardsley was the most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau era, renowned for his dark and perverse images and grotesque erotica, which were the main themes of his later work. Some of his drawings, inspired by Japanese shunga artwork, featured enormous genitalia. His most famous erotic illustrations concerned themes of history and mythology; these include his illustrations for a privately printed edition of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, and his drawings for Oscar Wilde’s play Salome, which eventually premiered in Paris in 1896.
He also produced extensive illustrations for books and magazines (e.g. for a deluxe edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d'Arthur) and worked for magazines such as The Studio and The Savoy, of which he was a co-founder. Beardsley also wrote Under the Hill, an unfinished erotic tale based loosely on the legend of Tannhäuser, published in The Savoy. Beardsley was a caricaturist and did some political cartoons, mirroring Wilde's irreverent wit in art. Beardsley's work reflected the decadence of his era and his influence was enormous, clearly visible in the work of the French Symbolists, the Poster art Movement of the 1890s and the work of many later-period Art Nouveau artists like Pape and Clarke.
An absolute collector's item
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