AUBREY BEARDSLEY

ENGLISH, 1872–1898 

 

THE CLIMAX, FROM A PORTFOLIO OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY’S DRAWINGS ILLUSTRATING “SALOME” BY OSCAR WILDE

1907

Before his death from tuberculosis at age twenty-five, Aubrey Beardsley achieved rapid notoriety with licentious and decadent imagery that bulldozed the conventions of Victorian decorum. He made a set of drawings for Oscar Wilde’s Salome, a one-act play whose themes of lust and necrophilia proved too much for the British censors (it was not performed until 1896, in Paris). But if Beardsley’s subject matter attracted controversy, so did his highly original style. The exquisite linework of his black-and-white illustrations, influenced by Japanese prints and heralding Art Nouveau, attained a level of decorative refinement rarely seen before or since.

MEDIUM	Line block print
DIMENSIONS	Image: 9 × 6 3/8 in.
ACQUIRED BY	Princeton University Art Museum | Princeton, New Jersey
ACCESSION NUMBER	x1939-83o

FÉLIX BRACQUEMOND

FRENCH, 1833–1914

 

PORTRAIT OF EDMOND DE GONCOURT

1881

One of the most gifted French etchers of the nineteenth century, Félix Bracquemond was also a devotee of Japanese art, a passion he shared with his friend the writer, collector, and aesthete Edmond de Goncourt. In this penetrating portrait, Goncourt is shown at home, surrounded by his diverse collection of cherished objects. The wafting plume of smoke from Goncourt’s cigarette is an especially virtuosic touch, its arabesque path evoking the pleasures of open-ended leisure and reflection.

MEDIUM	Etching on paper
DIMENSIONS	Image: 17 13/16 x 12 5/8 in.
ACQUIRED BY	Clark Art Institute
ACCESSION NUMBER	1969.23

PHILIPPE-JOSEPH BROCARD

FRENCH, 1831–1896

 

MOSQUE LAMP

c. 1880

Produced throughout the medieval Islamic world, mosque lamps became collectible items for European home interiors in the late nineteenth century and were coveted for their distinctive shape, ornate inscriptions, and decorative enameling and gilding. Philippe-Joseph Brocard began collecting mosque lamps as an antiques restorer in Paris and eventually learned the techniques to fabricate his own, which were exhibited at many world’s fairs and widely admired. This lamp by Brocard is strikingly similar to an Egyptian example reproduced in Prisse d’Avennes’s major four-volume compendium published in 1877, L’art arabe. It can be conjectured that Brocard modeled his lamp on that illustration.

MEDIUM	Enameled, gilded, and applied glass
DIMENSIONS	14 13/16 x 10 in.
ACCESSION NUMBER	2013.13
ACQUIRED BY	Clark Art Institute | Gift of Thomas Branchick and Mary Kontarasis in Memory of William Schade

GEORGES DE FEURE

FRENCH, 1868–1943

 

LA FEMME FATALE

1896

In his prints and posters, Georges de Feure returned repeatedly to the theme of the femme fatale, or woman who seduces men only to ultimately destroy them. While living in Montmartre in the 1890s, de Feure encountered many artists, writers, theater performers, and other bohemians who were similarly fascinated with this theme and its expression across the arts. Like Toulouse-Lautrec in Divan Japonais, de Feure accentuates the sharp profile of his female subject, but he crowds the picture with many other decorative elements, using arabesque line to unite a wealth of abstract patterns.
 

MEDIUM	Color lithograph
DIMENSIONS	Image: 13 3/4 x 10 1/4 in.
ACQUIRED BY	Clark Art Institute | Acquired with funds donated by Jeffrey Shedd
ACCESSION NUMBER	1991.15

OWEN JONES

ENGLISH, 1809–1874

 

PLATE 9 FROM PLANS, ELEVATIONS, SECTIONS, AND DETAILS OF THE ALHAMBRA

1842–45

On his travels with Jules Goury to the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain, Owen Jones observed architectural elevations and details that he illustrated and compiled into a luxury two-volume publication, Alhambra, complete with full-page chromolithographs. Goury’s death from cholera in 1834, at Granada, meant in practical terms that Jones had to proceed alone and may also have lent a deeper Romantic inflection to his impressions of the Moorish past. The title page is adorned with part of a verse from Victor Hugo’s Les Orientales: “L’Alhambra, palais que les génies ont doré comme un rêve et rempli d’harmonies” (The Alhambra, palace that genies have gilded like a dream and filled with harmonies).

MEDIUM	Chromolithograph
DIMENSIONS	Sheet: 26 × 19 1/4 in.
ACQUIRED BY	Chapin Library, Williams College | Williamstown, Massachusetts

ADOLPH MENZEL

GERMAN, 1815–1905

 

THE WILLOW TREE

1843

Adolph Menzel has ingeniously shaped the trailing branches of the willow tree and joined them up with the stalks of ground plants to form a continuous frame around the image. Even as he molds nature to the demands of art, Menzel does not dispense with narrative. As if the central tree, pollarded to a harmonious and elegant extreme, were not enough to hold our interest, the artist stages a scene of chivalric romance, comically watched over by a treetop figure seen from the rear.

MEDIUM	Etching on white wove paper
DIMENSIONS	9 1/16 x 6 1/8 in.
ACQUIRED BY	Harvard Art Museums / Busch-Reisinger Museum | Cambridge, Massachusetts | Gift of Daniel Bell
ACCESSION NUMBER	1987.19

ALPHONSE MUCHA

CZECH, 1860–1939

 

BISCUITS LEFÈVRE-UTILE

1896

The butter cookies of Biscuits Lefèvre-Utile (better known as LU), a nineteenth-century French factory still operating today, are the delicacies being advertised in this poster. Alphonse Mucha deftly blends the swirling hair of his female subject with an abstract border pattern, using gilding to enhance the effect. The soft sensuality of the woman proffering the plate of biscuits is tempered by wholesome rusticity, a strategy calculated to appeal to a wide range of consumers.

MEDIUM	Color lithograph on paper laid down on linen
DIMENSIONS	24 1/8 × 17 1/8 in.
ACQUIRED BY	National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC | Evelyn Stefansson Nef Fund
ACCESSION NUMBER	2016.140.2

MAX KLINGER

GERMAN, 1857–1920

 

PYRAMUS AND THISBE (PYRAMUS UND THISBE) FROM 
PRESERVING OVID'S OFFERING

1879

A prodigiously gifted printmaker who ventured into new psychological territory, Max Klinger turned the crisply linear style of his German Romantic forebears to idiosyncratic, sometimes subversive, ends. His print cycle Preserving Ovid’s Offering, based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, confounded viewers’ expectations by disrupting the plot lines of well-known stories such as Pyramus and Thisbe or Echo and Narcissus. Arabesque designs occupy wide borders and are packed full of meaning, with figures, animals, and objects that subtly comment on the main action—a bit like a jester’s ironic asides.

MEDIUM	Mixed intaglio
DIMENSIONS	8 5/16 x 11 13/16 in.
ACQUIRED BY	Smart Museum of Art | The University of Chicago | Gift of the Williams and Flora Richardson Library
ACCESSION NUMBER	1994.9p

PAUL ELIE RANSON

FRENCH, 1864–1909

 

ABÉLARD AND HÉLOÏSE (THE LESSON)

1890

The arabesque background to Paul Ranson’s painting offers a foil to the ostensible subject, the medieval lovers Abelard and Heloise. The conflict of styles is apparent in Ranson’s effort to reconcile the decorative flatness of the arabesque design with the physical mass of the figures, themselves outlined in archaizing fashion. Ranson’s use of a repeating ornamental motif is an apt reminder of his training as a decorative artist who made tapestry designs, stained glass, and ceramics as well as paintings. He was a central figure in the Nabi group of artists, hosting meetings in his Paris apartment (nicknamed “the Temple”) and introducing esoteric rituals including a secret Nabi language.

MEDIUM	Oil on canvas
DIMENSIONS	19 3/4 × 24 in.
ACQUIRED BY	Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art | Hartford, Connecticut | Gift of Samuel Josefowitz
ACCESSION NUMBER	1960.393

PHILIPP OTTO RUNGE

GERMAN, 1777–1810

 

EVENING, FROM THE SERIES THE TIMES OF THE DAY

1807

Philipp Otto Runge’s suite of four allegorical engravings is at once a hymn to nature and a spiritual vision, referring to not only the times of the day but also the seasons of the year and of human life. For such an ambitious and esoteric subject, Runge adopted a style that offers superficial resemblances to Antoine Watteau’s design but also profound differences. Vegetal and figural elements fill the frames, and principles of symmetry and decorative profusion govern all four images. Yet the artist keeps each composition on a symbolic level, with few elements that could be called realistic. Monumental in scale, the prints are bounded, self-enclosed worlds. By sacrificing some of the free-flowing, open-ended aspects of arabesque, Runge channels this formal device into a decisive generator of all-over composition.

MEDIUM	Engraving, second state of two
DIMENSIONS	Plate: 27 15/16 × 18 5/8 in.
ACQUIRED BY	The Metropolitan Museum of Art | New York, New York | Janet Lee Kadesky Ruttenberg Fund, in honor of Colta Ives
ACCESSION NUMBER	2007.130

HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

FRENCH, 1864–1901

 

DIVAN JAPONAIS

1893

This advertising poster for the Divan Japonais, a cabaret that attracted the bohemians and hangers-on of Montmartre’s lively night life, prominently features the silhouette of one of its star dancers, Jane Avril, portrayed seated rather than performing. The elegance of Jane’s upright form chimes with the virtual symphony of arabesques surrounding her: the curved back of her chair, her companion’s hat and cane, the scrolls of the double basses in the pit orchestra, the hands of the conductor, the performer onstage—and so on.

MEDIUM	Color lithograph
DIMENSIONS	31 3/4 x 23 1/2 in.
ACQUIRED BY	Smart Museum of Art | University of Chicago | Bequest of Louise H. Landau
ACCESSION NUMBER	2003.69