| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Titles | - The New Coinage. Four designs which were not sent in for competition.
(series title)
- Walter Crane
(assigned by artist)
|
| Materials and techniques | Pen, Indian ink and graphite on paper |
| Brief description | Drawing by Aubrey Beardsley, caricature of Walter Crane's political opinions, from a set of four caricatures entitled 'The New Coinage. Four designs which were not sent in for competition', for an illustration on p.154 of 'The Pall Mall Budget', 9 February 1893, graphite, pen and Indian ink, London, ca. 1893 |
| Physical description | A drawing in black ink on white paper showing a caricature of Walter Crane depicted as an angel holding a burning torch and a blade dripping blood. |
| Dimensions | - Height: 12.8cm
- Width: 13.6cm
|
| Marks and inscriptions | - (Inscribed in graphite with notes)
- 'WALTER CRANE' (Inscribed in ink)
- 'DEMOS REX' (Inscribed in ink)
|
| Credit line | Bequeathed by H. H. Harrod |
| Object history | Bequeathed by H. H. Harrod, 1948 |
| Subjects depicted | |
| Bibliographic references | - Calloway, Stephen. Aubrey Beardsley. London: V & A Publications, 1998. 224pp, illus. ISBN: 1851772197.
- Victoria and Albert Museum, Department of Engraving, Illustration and Design, and Department of Paintings, Accessions: 1948, Volume II, Henry Herbert Harrod Bequest, London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1957
- Linda Gertner Zatlin, Aubrey Beardsley : a catalogue raisonne. New Haven : Yale University Press, [2016] 2 volumes (xxxi, [1], 519, [1] pages; xi, [1], 547, [1] pages) : illustrations (some color) ; 31 cm. ISBN: 9780300111279
The entry is as follows:
277
The New Coinage: Walter Crane
late January 1893
Victoria and Albert Museum, London (E.38-1948)
Pen and Indian ink over pencil on off-white wove paper secured to backing with slotted hinges; 5 x 5 7/16 inches (127 x 138 mm).
INSCRIPTIONS: Recto inscribed by the artist in ink outside left bottom of circle: WALTER CRANE / [inside circle]: DEMOS REX / [in pencil in another hand]: 1 ½ have by Monday at 6; verso in pencil: PMG / 459 / 6 Monday / [in black ink]: [half circle] / E.39-1948 / [stamp of]: V.A.M
PROVENANCE: Herbert von Garvens; W. T. Spencer (bookseller); H. H. Harrod; bequeathed to Victoria and Albert Museum in 1948.
EXHIBITION: London 1966-8 (160), 1983 (150a).
LITERATURE: Vallance 1897 (p.203), 1909 (no.55.ii); Uncollected Work 1925 (p.xx); Gallatin 1945 (no. 249-52); Reade and Dickenson 1966-8 (no. 158-60); Reade 1967 (p.314 n.40); Samuels Lasner 1995 (no.8); Sturgis 1998a (p.128).
REPRODUCED: Pall Mall Budget, 2 February 1893 (p.154); Early Work 1899 (no.141); Reade 1967 (plate 40).
Beardsley implicitly compares the value systems of the British monarchy as seen in the 1893 gold sovereign commemorative coin (known as the ‘Old Head’) and its comprehensive legend, ‘Victoria, by the grace of God queen of Britain, defender of the faith, empress of India’, with socialism and its implications through ‘Demos Rex’, the austere inscription he gives to Crane. ‘Demos rex’ is Beardsley’s combination of Greek and Latin, which translates as ‘The people are king’ (thanks to the late Steve Glaze for translating the mottoes and discussing the coins with me). The motto mockingly implies that the people would rule by the grace of no one (instead of God), for Marxist socialism abolishes all forms of obligation - to virtue, land ownership, religion and tradition. Socialists rule presumably themselves, or perhaps nothing; rule by the people could mean lawlessness and anarchy, a major concern of the contemporary government. The commemorative coin implies that its value derives from Victoria’s placid virtue, tacit in her crown, her modest head covering, complacent profile and her vast dominions. Beardsley’s coin, with its jumbled Greek and Latin motto facing Crane who is dressed as a pugnaciously staring socialist, implies that its value derives only from the working man’s labour that would create a new order disregarding the old values and destructive of the comfortable distinctions that classically educated Victorian gentlemen required to run the empire.
Beardsley’s ideas about socialism emerge further through the symbols: Crane’s political naivete, seen in his classical attributes of wings and toga-like garb, and his idealistic but ineffective Marxism, seen in his smoking torch and his dagger-like pen dripping gouts of ink, combine with his course unshaven working man’s features under a proletarian cap and his pugnaciously intense gaze to intimate that the socialist desire for equality of all people is the exchange of one authoritarian system for another. Walter Crane was not offended by this drawing; in February 1893 after it was published, the two artists met at the home of Gleeson White, where Crane, White wrote to Scotson-Clark, ‘took to [Beardsley] greatly’ (quoted in Sturgis 1998a, p.128). For further comment, see 274 and 275 above.
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