| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Titles | - The New Coinage. Four designs which were not sent in for competition.
(series title)
- Sir J. Millais RA
(assigned by artist)
|
| Materials and techniques | Pen and Indian ink, and graphite on paper |
| Brief description | Drawing by Aubrey Beardsley, caricature from a set of four entitled 'The New Coinage. Four designs which were not sent in for competition', caricature of a Millais subject depicting a little girl seated on a sand-castle, for illustration on p.154 of 'The Pall Mall Budget', 9 February 1893, graphite, pen and Indian ink on paper, Great Britain, ca. 1893 |
| Physical description | A drawing in black ink on white paper depicting a caricature of a Millais subject showing a little girl, with bucket and spade, seated upon a sand castle. |
| Dimensions | - Height: 14.7cm
- Width: 14.4cm
|
| Marks and inscriptions | - 'SIR / J. MILLAIS / RA.' (Inscribed in ink)
- (Inscribed in graphite with notes)
|
| Credit line | Bequeathed by H. H. Harrod |
| Object history | Bequeathed by H. H. Harrod, 1948 |
| Subjects depicted | |
| Association | |
| 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:
275
The New Coinage: Sir J. Millais, R.A.
late January 1893
Victoria and Albert Museum, London (E.36-1948)
Pen and Indian ink over pencil on off-white wove paper secured to backing with slotted hinges; 5 13/16 x 5 11/16 inches (145 x 143 mm).
INSCRIPTIONS: Recto inscribed by the artist in ink at lower sides in capitals below circle: SIE / J. MILLAIS./ RA./ [in pencil in another hand]: 1 ½ have by Monday at 6 / 7; verso in pencil: [illegible] / 8459 / 6 Monday / [in ink]: E.36-1948 / [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 (158), Tokyo 1983 (2); Rome 1985 (18.3).
LITERATURE: Athenaeum 11 February 1893 (p.192); Vallance 1897 (p.203), 1909 (no.55.ii); Phillips 1917 (p.23); Uncollected Work 1925 (p.xx, nos. 284-7); Gallatin 1945 (no. 249-52); Reade and Dickenson 1966-8 (no. 158-60); Reade 1967 (p.314 n.38); Samuels Lasner 1995 (no.8); Smith 2006 (p.106).
REPRODUCED: Pall Mall Budget, 2 February 1893 (p.154); Early Work 1899 (no.141); Reade 1967 (plate 38).
In an introduction to Christ in Hades (1917), originally published in 1896, the English poet Stephen Phillips (1868-1915) recounts that when Lewis Hind brought Beardsley to the Pall Mall Budget, the artist ‘at once began to caper through its pages,... One day I commissioned him to make drawings from the plaster designs for the new coinage. He did them with spirit, but he made them comic’ (1917, p.23). Hind, the editor, remembers the pleasure of accompanying Beardsley, ‘shrewd in comment, and amused by everything’, to the theatre on assignment to create ‘news’ drawings for the Pall Mall Budget and to the Royal Mint to examine plaster casts of the new coins for 1893, which resulted in this and the following four caricatures of contemporary artists’ styles (Uncollected Work 1925, p.xx, nos. 284-7). The display of the new coinage designed by Sir Thomas Brock, RA (1847-1922) to replace designs by the late Sir Edgar Boehm was announced in the Athenaeum on 11 February 1893 (p.192). Four of Beardsley’s designs accompanied an article in the Pall Mall Budget titled ‘The New Coinage. A Visit to the Mint’; Beardsley’s designs appear over the (sub)title. ‘The New Coinage. Designs that were not sent in for competition’ (2 February 1893, p.154). Queen Victoria (no.279 below) is the only drawing extant of a number suppressed because they were considered too provocative to publish. Beardsley’s response to Mr Brock’s designs was to create coins in the styles of other artists. For John Everett Millais, Beardsley creates a little girl with a bee-stung lip sitting on an island empire of sand. One may believe that the humour compares with the drawings for the Aeneid, Book II (nos. 47-65 above; WA), but Beardsley provocatively subverts Millais’ innocent young girl, as in Cherry Ripe (1879, private collection); this little girl, sitting in a lewd position with perhaps a hint of pubic hair between her spread legs, is ready to be plucked (for a different view, see Smith 2006, no.106). On the verso in ink is a design scratched out and covered by gouache.
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