The Black Cat by Aubrey Beardsley
10"x8" ($40) | 14"x11" ($85) | 20"x16" ($275) | 24"x20" ($675)
Greetings, collectors! Allow us to take a brief pause from our April celebration of National Poetry Month for a delightfully dark print release in praise of prose. Drawn in 1894 by 19th c. English illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, our newest Vintage Edition, The Black Cat, served as a sinister companion to Edgar Allen Poe’s story of the same name.
In the grim tale, the narrator mistakenly walls up the furious cat with the corpse of his wife. Beardsley’s The Black Cat features the moment a wall is broken through, revealing the fierce one-eyed feline balanced atop the dead woman’s head. The crazed creature is rendered in fine white linework, blending almost completely with the solid black darkness of the inner wall with the exception of his single searing eye. His deceased perch is flatly white, economically delineated by eerily light penwork.
Born in Brighton, England in 1872, Beardsley began drawing in grammar school, eventually attending the Westminster School of Art under the tutelage of Fred Brown. Traveling to Paris in 1892, Beardsley discovered the art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and the Parisian penchant for Japanese printmaking techniques. A master of pen and ink, Beardsley developed this stark contrast as his signature style. Renowned for his dark—and often grotesque—illustrations, he grew to be one of the most controversial artists of the Art Nouveau era.
Despite his infamy, Beardsley’s work was widely featured in books, magazines, and posters in several countries. His commission to illustrate a new American edition of Poe’s Tales of Mystery and the Imagination in the 1890s yielded four gloriously grisly designs including The Black Cat. This limited edition print celebrates the beauty of the bleak and Beardsley’s mastery of the morose. So we dedicate this one to all the literary lovers and connoisseurs of creep. Because hey, it’s Art for Everyone.
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