Public Domain Image DVD – Aubrey Beardsley

Description

You can purchase this product as a Digital Download at a cheaper price on the Public Domain Image Library website.nnThis great public domain image DVD contains over 420 images by the prolific but short-lived illustrator of the aesthetic movement, Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898). Beardsley is mainly known for his book illustration work which is predominately in black and white, either done with pen and ink or by a wood-block printing technique, greatly influenced by Japanese woodcuts. He also produced a few colour posters which are included on this DVD.nnnBeardsley’s work was so esteemed that it was even forged! The drawings in a book published some time after he died, which contained 50 supposedly new Beardsley images, were widely declared to to be fakes. Those 50 images are also included on the DVD in a separate folder.nnThe images, which are in jpeg format and scanned at 300 or 600dpi, are out of copyright and in the public domain in the UK, US and all countries that follow the same copyright rules, and therefore can be used as many times as you like without paying any royalties or commissions to anyone!nnAubrey Beardsley was a young man with a big talent. His only artistic training was a year’s worth of evening classes at the Westminster School of Art whilst working a full-time job.nnAt the age of just 19, his first major commission was to illustrate Thomas Mallory’s Morte D’Arthur for which he received the princely sum of £200 – a veritable fortune at the time. At around the same time he was also responsible for the various, perhaps juvenile ‘doodles’ which appeared in the Bon-Mots books of 1893 and 1894.nnnIt seems that Beardsley had never really grown out of the childish obsession with sex and throughout his work phallic symbols abounded, as well as an obsession with foetuses, the macabre, the perverse, the erotic and the grotesque. This was both shocking and fascinating for Victorian England and he quickly became one of the most controversial, yet highly sought after, artists of the Art Nouveau period.nnIn 1893, Beardsley heard that Oscar Wilde was looking for an illustrator for his latest play, Salom©. Given the challenge, he decided to pitch for the job and produced a picture (J’ai baise ta bouche, ‘I have kissed thy mouth’) that was published in the biggest art magazine of the day, The Studio. Wilde of course saw it and Beardsley got the job, producing some of his best work for the book.nnnFor John Lane publishers, Beardsley produced many book title designs for their ‘Keynotes’ series of books. These designs were used on both the cover and the inside title page of the book, gilded on the covers. The key designs you’ll find on the DVD were also used in the ‘Keynotes’ series, one in each book.nnnBeardsley co-founded The Yellow Book in 1894 and served as Art Editor for the first 4 editions, producing the covers and other illustrations for those editions. He had already finished artwork for no. 5 when his career and world came crashing down, through no fault of his own.nnOscar Wilde was