Aubrey Beardsley Biography

Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) remains a mysterious figure, not least due to his eccentric art. Suffering from tuberculosis since childhood, Beardsley counted Irish author and playwright W. B. Yeats among his friends. While modern historians have argued that Beardsley's placement within the Decadent, Aesthete, Symbolist groups lends credence to the belief that he was homosexual, more academic work reveals Beardsley probably had an incestuous relationship with his older sister Mabel Beardsley (1871-1916). Beardsley's six years of artistic effort show his complete originality and what Yeats called, "artistic genius".

Sources:

W. B. Yeats, Autobiography (1927)

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