Design for Front Wrapper of the Parts Issue of Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur

Aubrey Beardsley

Design for Front Wrapper of the Parts Issue of Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur

Ink and pencil on paper, touched with Chinese white,

[1892].

While Beardsley was turning out one drawing after another to accompany Malory’s Arthurian chronicles, he was, despite his poor health, simultaneously taking on other paid visual work. The effects of exhaustion, inattention, and inexperience—at the time, Beardsley was still a youth of twenty—showed in this drawing. Not only did he misspell the title of the volume as La Mort Darthure, but the sloppy lettering that he produced in haste required obvious touching up. This sort of correction was possible, thanks to the new processes of photomechanical reproduction, which Beardsley embraced ardently. He became not merely an advocate for them, but their apostle. Modernity demanded speed, volume, and the mass marketing of artistic goods, and Beardsley’s gaunt, bony visage was soon the dominant public face of modern design.

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