A LIFETIME IN AN HOUR

Known chiefly for his black and white drawings, Aubrey Beardsley was a prolific graphic illustrator and artist, whose influences included Ancient Greek vases,and Alexander Pope’s . Even in the decadent 1890s his bawdy illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s earned Beardsley notoriety, before his artistic career was cut short when he died of tuberculosis in 1898, aged 25. He produced over a thousand drawings in just six years, prompting his friend the poet Arthur Symons to remark ‘He had the fatal speed of those who are to die young…that absorption of a lifetime in an hour, which we find in those who hasten to have done their work before, knowing that they will not see the evening.’