Aubrey Beardsley

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Aubrey Beardsley

by Frederick Hollyer
platinum print, circa 1890
4 in. x 5 3/4 in. (101 mm x 145 mm)
Purchased, 2013
Primary Collection
NPG P1828

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Frederick Hollyer (1838-1933), Photographer and art publisher. Artist or producer associated with 111 portraits, Sitter associated with 6 portraits.

This portraitback to top

This photograph of Beardsley was taken as he was rising to fame and is generally acknowledged as one of Hollyer's finest portraits. Hollyer's portrait photographs of his friends and associates, such as this, are recognised for their rare delicacy as his sitters appear unselfconsciously posed and softly lit. Beardsley suggested this photograph as 'the best frontispiece' for Fifty Drawings, a bound collection of his artwork published in 1897.

Linked displays and exhibitionsback to top

Events of 1890back to top

Current affairs

William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, publishes In Darkest England, in which he compares the supposedly 'civilised' England with 'Darkest Africa'. A critique of the degenerate state of society, Booth also proposed social welfare schemes to alleviate the sufferings of the urban poor.
The world's first electric underground railway opens to the public in London, passing under the Thames and linking the City of London and Stockwell.

Art and science

William Morris founds the Kelmscott Press, a revival of art and craft techniques of book printing. Publications included The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1896), with decorative designs and typeface by Morris and illustrations by Edward Burne-Jones.
Vincent Van Gogh dies after shooting himself in the chest in Auvers-sur-Oise, France.
Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray first appears in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine .

International

Cecil Rhodes, organiser of the diamond-mining De Beers Consolidated Mines, becomes premier of Cape Colony as part of his expansionist aims in South Africa.
In Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II dismisses Otto von Bismarck.
An international anti-slavery conference is held in Brussels, leading to the signing of a treaty by all the major maritime nations covering action to be taken against the trade in Africa and suppression of it by sea.

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