Aubrey Beardsley, Decadent Elegance

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English artist who died at the age of 25 in the late 19th century. His black ink drawings were influenced by Japanese woodcuts and depicted the grotesque, the decadent and the erotic. He was a leading figure in a broad aesthetic movement that swept the British Empire and included artists and writers such as Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler. This exhibition will feature around 200 of Beardsley's artworks, including illustrations and rare hand-drawn drawings from his early to late years, including his groundbreaking work Morte d'Arthur (1893-1894) by Malory, Salome (1894) by Wilde, which is also well known in Japan, and his later masterpiece Mademoiselle de Maupin (1897) by Gautier, as well as colourful posters and contemporary decorations.