Poster for The Yellow Book: Contents of Vol. 1, April 1894

Aubrey Beardsley

Poster for The Yellow Book: Contents of Vol. 1, April 1894

London:

Elkin Mathews and John Lane,

1894.

Color lithograph.

Beardsley did as much as any artist of the 1890s to blur distinctions between the fine and commercial arts. In Britain, at least, he had no rival. For many posters, he created images that were purely decorative, with little reference to the products they ostensibly were advertising. They appealed to spectators through allusion rather than through aggressive, literal marketing. Certainly, that was true of the romanticized, idyllic vision of modern femininity he used to bring attention to the first number of The Yellow Book. Beardsley must have had confidence in this strategy, for his own fate was bound up with the sales of the item he was promoting. Not only was he the new quarterly’s art editor but, as the “Pictures” list showed, he was a major contributor, responsible for four different visual works (a number that did not include front and back covers, decorative spines, and title-pages).

From the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press