| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Title | Le Morte Darthur
(series title) |
| Materials and techniques | Pen and ink on paper |
| Brief description | Drawing by Aubrey Beardsley, design for the chapter heading of Chapter XI, book I, in Le Morte Darthur, pen and ink, London, ca.1893-4 |
| Physical description | A black ink drawing on white paper depicting a stylised image of a nude mermaid emerging from the sea. In the sky there are stars and birds in flight. |
| Dimensions | - Height: 8.7cm
(sheet)
- Width: 5.9cm
(sheet)
- Image height: 83mm
- Image width: 56mm
|
| Object history | Beardsley was commissioned by J. M. Dent to produce illustrations for his intended republication of Malory's romantic tale 'Le Morte Darthur'; it was Beardsley's first commission. This design was for the chapter-heading of Chapter XI, Book I, of 'Le Morte Darthur' which was published between 1893-4 by Dent.
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| Subjects depicted | |
| Associations | |
| Literary reference | 'Le Morte Darthur' by Thomas Malory |
| Bibliographic references | - Calloway, Stephen. Aubrey Beardsley. London: V & A Publications, 1998. 224pp, illus. ISBN: 1851772197.
chapter 3
- 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:
351
Mermaid in the Sea
Book I, chapter xi
Autumn 1892
Victoria and Albert Museum, London (D.120-1899)
Pen, brush and Indian ink over pencil on white wove paper; 3 7/16 x 2 3/8 inches (87 x 60 mm).
INSCRIPTIONS: Verso in ink: D.120-1899
PROVENANCE: J. M. Dent;...; Tregaskis 1898, Catalogue 420 (483p), bt. Victoria and Albert Museum on 1 March 1899.
EXHIBITION: London 1901 (653 or 654), 1966-8 (182); Tokyo 1983 (9); Munich 1984 (50); Rome 1985 (3.4).
LITERATURE: Vallance 1897 (p.202), 1909 (no.59.xx); Gallatin 1945 (no. 345-624); Reade 1967 (p.316 n.64); Madsen 1975 (pp.214-15, 236); Samuels Lasner 1995 (no.22); Zatlin 1997 (chapter 2,3, passim).
REPRODUCED: Le Morte Darthur, 1893-4 (p.19); Reade 1967 (plate 62).
Repeated in Book XIX, chapter x, p.898. Reade attributed the mermaid’s scales and tail to the ‘short feathers in Whistler’s Peacock Room (1967, p.316, np.64: now in the Freer Gallery, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC), but they and the water owe an equal debt to the centres of flowers in William de Morgan tiles and the forms in Japanese woodblock prints (Zatlin 1997, chapter 2,3). Like Whistler, Beardsley would use fish-scale pattern decoratively (see no.361 below). Both Toorop and Beardsley at the same time created undulations such as the coils of water running over and around the mermaid (Reade 1967 p.316 n.64). The mermaid’s figure, in reverse, may have been influenced by Burne-Jones’ painting A Sea Nymph (1880, sold Christie’s [London] 14 June 2005 [34]), which Beardsley may have seen in Burne-Jones’ studio or in magazine or newspaper reproductions. Drawings such as this influenced, among others, the Glasgow Four, who allowed sadness to surface in their female figures, and the Scottish writer John Duncan, who adapted the whiplash of the waves to Celtic ornament in his illustration to The Norland Wind, published in the Evergreen, vol I, 1895, p.109 (Madsen 1975 p.215). The figure’s hair influences a wide range of artists, including J. Lemmen in The Mermaid’s Cave (1893, reproduced in The Savoy, no. 2, p.171) and Georges de Feure in La femme damnee (gouache on paper, 1897-8, collection the late Victor Arwas, London), which features a woman wrapped in tendrils of hair, a non-realistic landscape and the oversized flowers seen in many of Beardsley’s drawings for Malory.
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