Public Domain Image DVD – Aubrey Beardsley

Full Description

Available on DVD or as a digital download

This great public domain image DVD (or digital download) 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.

Beardsley’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.

The 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!

Aubrey 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.

At 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.

It 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.

In 1893, Beardsley heard that Oscar Wilde was looking for an illustrator for his latest play, Salomé.  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.

For 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.

Beardsley 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.

Oscar Wilde was arrested in April 1895 for gross indecency as it was uncovered that he was a practising homosexual – Beardsley was associated with Wilde after illustrating one of his plays, Salomé.  Upon his arrest, Wilde was seen to be carrying a yellow book under his arm.  Whether or not it was THE Yellow Book, we’ll never know but nonetheless the damage was already done.  Beardsley was sacked from his position with John Lane publishers and became almost unemployable overnight.

Beardsley was then picked up by Book shop owner and publisher, Leonard Smithers, a somewhat shady character who published porn amongst other things.  Smithers commissioned Beardsley to do some highly risqué images for a book entitled the Lysistrata of Aristophanes.  Later, when Beardsley was spending his last days in France, Beardsley wrote to Smithers and asked him to destroy the pictures made for this book and ‘bad drawings’.  Smithers did not – he printed more copies of the book.

The images were abridged for the ‘Later Work of Aubrey Beardsley’ (1920) so as not to show the risqué bits – both abridged and unabridged images are included on our DVD.

Harry Sidney Nichols was a publishing partner of Smithers and perhaps even more shady.  In 1920, some 22 years after Beardsley’s untimely death from TB, Nichols published a new book of supposedly new Beardsley images entitled ‘Fifty Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley’.  The images in this book were widely pronounced as being forgeries, despite the defences of Nichols.

The pictures were said to have been poor imitations, probably by Nichols himself.  All 50 of these images are included on this DVD in a separate folder for you to see for yourself.  Whether by Beardsley himself or Nichols, these images are still out of copyright and in the public domain so you are free to use them as you wish.

Beardsley’s career lasted just 6 years.  He lived his life at a fast pace, knowing that he had little time.  He died of TB in Menton, France, in 1898 with his mother at his side.  He was just 25 years old.

You can use the images on this disc for anything you like – make prints to frame, postcards, posters, greetings cards, decoupage and pyramage for card-making, background papers for card-making and scrapbooking, collage, altered art, calendars, mugs, mouse-mats, t-shirts, fridge-magnets and so much more!  Use them in a book, on your website, blog or promotional post on Facebook. 

The pictures are named in the following format:-

Beardsley, Aubrey (1872-1898) – Later Work 1920 – Scarlet Pastorale

Ie. Artist name and dates – Publication and date – Picture name or description

Pictures on this disc range from around 400-500 pixels wide/tall for the small ‘doodles’ from the Bon-mots of 1893-4 up to 10,000 x 5,700 pixels for the full-page images.  Images are scanned at 300 or 600dpi.  

This DVD features images from the following books & publications by Aubrey Beardsley:-

Le Morte D’Arthur 1893
Salomé 1894
Bon-mots 1893 & 1894
The Art of Aubrey Beardsley 1918
Rape of the Lock 1896
The Lysistrata of Aristophanes 1896
Under the Hill 1903
Tales of Mystery & Imagination 1894
The Yellow Book 1894-5
The Savoy Magazine 1896
Studio 1896-8
Early Work of Aubrey Beardsley 1899
Later Work of Aubrey Beardsley 1920
Fifty Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley (forgeries), probably by H.S. Nichols 1920

We’ve also included a 30-page eulogy by British-Canadian journalist, art critic and art dealer Robert (Robbie) Ross who was a friend and confidant of Beardsley.  This moving eulogy was published in Ben Jonson’s Volpone in 1898 and is a small insight into how Beardsley was regarded at the time.

The disc also includes a comprehensive article about the copyright rules in both the UK and the US and how they affect each other.  Not only will you be able to understand the rules that put these pictures into the public domain, but it will also arm you with the knowledge so that you can decide if other pictures can be freely used in the same way.

Suitable for PC/MAC.

Please note that the software box shown above is for illustrative purposes only – the DVD is printed, supplied in a plastic wallet and sent in a sturdy cardboard disc mailer. 

This compilation © Public Domain Image Library.  You can use the images on this disc to make into other products for sale including, but not limited to, all the uses outlined above. You may not reproduce this DVD as a whole or in part to be sold as raw images on another disc or website or in any way that might be considered competition to ourselves.