ARTHURIAN ART

Aubrey Beardsley
1872-1898

   Aubrey Beardsley was born in Brighton, England in 1872. While a clerk for a life insurance company in London, his growing interest in art led him to the Westminster School of Art. Around the time of a visit to Paris in 1892 at the young age of nineteen, he was commissioned to produce illustrations for a reprinting of Le Morte d'Arthur which was published in 1894 with a number of Beardsley's Gothic illustrations.
   Due to its popularity, it went through two more printings, each one with additional visual material. By the time of his death in 1898, Beardsley had become one of the most famous of the illustrators of the Art Nouveau period. He died at Mentone, France, 16 March, 1898 at the young age of 25.
   "He had the fatal speed of those who are to die young; that disquieting completeness and extent of knowledge, that absorption of a lifetime in an hour, which we find in those who hasten to have done their work before noon, knowing that they will not see the evening. He had played the piano in drawing-rooms as an infant prodigy, before, I suppose, he had ever drawn a line.
   "Famous at twenty as a draughtsman, he found time, in those incredibly busy years which remained to him, to deliberately train himself as a writer of prose, which was in its way as original as his draughtsmanship, and into a writer of verse which had at least ingenious and original movements. He seemed to have read everything, and had his preferences as adroitly in order, as wittily in evidence, as almost any man of letters; indeed, he seemed to know more, and was a sounder critic, of books than of pictures; with perhaps a deeper feeling for music that for either.
   "His conversation had a peculiar kind of brilliance, different in order, but scarce inferior in quality to that of any other contemporary master of that art; a salt, whimsical dogmatism, equally full of convinced egoism and of imperturbable keen-sightedness. Generally choosing to be paradoxical, and vehement on behalf of any enthusiasm of the mind, he was the dupe of none of his own statements, or indeed of his own enthusiasms, and, really, very coldly impartial.
   "He thought, and was right in thinking, very highly of himself; he admired himself enormously; but his intellect would never allow itself to be deceived even about his own accomplishments."
Excerpt from a memoir by Arthur Symons

The Achieving of the Sangreal
Arthur and the Strange Mantle
Bedivere Casts Excalibur into the Lake
Guenever in the Nunnery
How a Devil in Woman's Likeness Tempted Sir Bors
How Four Queens Found Launcelot Sleeping
How King Arthur Saw the Questing Beast and Thereof Had Great Marvel
How King Mark and Sir Dinadan Heard Sir Palomides
How King Mark Found Sir Tristram
How la Belle Isoud Nursed Sir Tristram
How la Belle Isoud Wrote to Sir Tristram
How Morgan le Fay Gave a Shield to Sir Tristram
How Queen Guenever Rode on Maying
How Sir Lancelot Was Known by Dame Elaine
How Sir Tristram Drank of the Love Drink
La Belle Isoud at Joyous Gard
The Lady of the Lake Telleth Arthur of the Sword Excalibur
Merlin and Nimue
Merlin in the Wash
Merlin Taketh the Child Arthur into His Keeping
Sir Launcelot and the Witch Hellawes