| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Title | The Mirror of Love
(generic title) |
| Materials and techniques | Drawing, pen and ink over traces of preliminary graphite on paper |
| Brief description | Drawing by Aubrey Beardsley, 'The Mirror of Love', design for the frontispiece illustrating the line 'Set in the heart as in a frame Love liveth' in the first of a collection of poems by Mark André Raffalovich, entitled 'The Thread and the Path', pen and ink and wash, published by David Nutt, London, 1895, but not used |
| Physical description | Portrait format drawing in black and white depicting a naked male angel, with wings both on his back and heels, surrounded by a large heart. This heart is the centrepiece to an ornate candelabra. Just above on each side, ornate bowls of fruit are depicted, with vines trailing down at each side of the heart. |
| Dimensions | - Sheet height: 27.4cm
- Sheet width: 17.7cm
- Image height: 262mm
- Image width: 175mm
Pasted onto sheet: 36.4 x 26.5 cm |
| Credit line | Given by Canon Gray in memory of André Raffalovich. |
| Object history | According to Stephen Calloway in his book Aubrey Beardsley. London: V & A Publications, 1998, p. 129: 'Drawn as a frontispiece for Raffalovich's book of poems, The Thread and the Path, the design was rejected by the publisher David Nutt, owing to the hermaphrodite nature of the figure personifying Love.' |
| Subjects depicted | |
| Literary reference | 'The Thread and the Path' by Andre Raffalovich |
| Bibliographic references | - Victoria & Albert Museum Department of Engraving, Illustration and Design & Department of Paintings Accessions 1934 London: Published under the Authority of the Board of Education, 1935
- Calloway, Stephen. Aubrey Beardsley. London: V & A Publications, 1998. 224pp, illus. ISBN: 1851772197.
p. 129
- 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
952
The Mirror of Love
mid-May 1895
Victoria and Albert Museum (E.1966-1934)
Pen, brush, and Indian ink over traces of pencil on white wove paper; 10 3/4 x 6 15/16 inches (273 x 176 mm); signed and dated.
FLOWERS: Grape (intoxication), apple (temptation), melon, pear (affection).
PROVENANCE: Presented by the artist to Marc Andre Raffalovich, at whose death in 1934, presented by Canon John Gray to Victoria and Albert Museum in memory of Raffalovich.
EXHIBITION: Paris 1960-1 (19); London 1966-8 (555); Bath, UK 1971; Tokyo 1983 (106); Munich 1984 (179); Rome 1985 (16.2); London 1993 (108); Koryiama, Japan 1998-9 (113).
LITERATURE: Vallance 1897 (208. where titled ‘Love Enshrined in a Heart in the Shape of a Mirror’), 1909 (no. 142); Rothenstein 1940 (I, pp. 135-6); Gallatin 1945 (no. 1051); Reade and Dickenson 1966 (n. 555); Reade 1967 (p. 350, n. 386); Busst in Fletcher 1967 (pp. 1-95); ‘Letters’ 1970 (pp. 86-9); Heyd 1986 (p. 66); Fletcher 1987 (p.133); Samuels Lasner 1995 (no. 130); Sturgis 1998a (p. 248).
REPRODUCED: Symons 1898 (plate 3); ‘Uncollected Work’ 1925 (no. 14); ‘Best of Beardsley’ 1948 (plate 57); Reade 1967 (plate 385).
This drawing was intended to be the frontispiece for a collection of verse written by Marc Andre Raffalovich, titled ‘The Thread and the Path’ (London: David Nutt, 1895). In mid-May 1895, Beardsley wrote to Raffalovich, ‘I am beginning the frontispiece - a literal rendering of the first line - [of the first poem, ‘Set in a heart as in a frame Love liveth’]’ (‘Letters’ 1970, p. 86 [c.16 May 1895]). Happy that Raffalovich liked the frontispiece, towards the end of May Beardsley told him, ‘I am going to Nutt’s with it the first thing next week and will try to explain how the book is to be made up’ (p. 87, Saturday [25 May 1895]). Writing perhaps the same day to Raffalovich’s companion John Gray, Beardsley anticipated the publisher’s conservatism: ‘Nutt will be a little surprised and shocked I think when he hears that some French novels are bound in yellow paper - however, I will break all that gently to him’ (p. 87). Nutt was shocked, not at Beardsley’s suggestion of yellow wrappers, but at the drawing Beardsley describes as ‘ a nude Amor’ (p. 89). Nutt refused to publish it, declaring ‘whatever you may say the drawing is hermaphrodite’, a comment ‘indicative of the indignant puritanism’ in the wake of Wilde’s incarceration (Reade 1967, p. 350, n. 386; Sturgis 1998a, p. 248). On 2 June 1895, Beardsley wrote to Raffalovich in vexation, ‘I am most distressed at Nutt’s behaviour, have you really withdrawn the book? Surely it would have been better simply to have dropped the frontispiece and let me make another (‘Letters’ 1970, p. 89). Nutt printed the book without a frontispiece.
The figure is androgynous not hermaphrodite, appealing rather than threatening, and it stands gracefully in the mirror (on nineteenth-century views of androgyny not hermaphroditism, see Busst in Fletcher 1967, pp. 1-95). Visually, Beardsley well expressed the theme of the first poem in Raffalovich’s book: ‘The quest through the labyrinth of the world and the flesh for the Uranian ideal that involves and transcends both sexes. When discovered it will be found to be the questor’s double’; in fact ‘the intended frontispiece could be read as the positive version of what is satirically expressed in ‘A Platonic Lament’ (no. 868 above; Fletcher 1987, p. 133). Indeed, Simon Wilson points out that the overall image of the figure is a vulva, the face is the clitoris (personal communication 23 July 2008). Beardsley’s title alludes to Burne-Jones’ painting, ‘The Mirror of Venus’ (1873-7, Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Portugal), in which her mirror is a pool of water, while Beardsley's figure of love is already in a mirror and seems to reflect the viewer of the drawing. The candelabra springs ‘from a form derived from that of a German goblet of the sixteenth century’ and it represents Diana of Ephesus, for the bumps on the base are breasts (Reade 1967, p. 350, n. 386; Simon Wilson, personal communication, 13 October 2007; for further comment on Diana of Ephesus, see no. 1084r below). The ends of the pins holding the mirror to its supporting frame resemble winged phalluses, recalling those Beardsley might have seen in Thomas Wright’s ‘The Worship of the Generative Powers During the Middle Ages of West Europe’ (1866), and other illustrated books on such topics that William Rothenstein acknowledged that Beardsley knew (Fletcher 1987, p. 133; Rothenstein 1940, I, pp. 135-6).
The Zionist and socialist Jugendstil illustrator E. M. Lilien took the motif of the angel with wings spread and gave it to the young boy in his drawing ‘The Creation of man’ for ‘Leider des Ghetto’ (1903; Heyd 1986, p. 66).
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