About Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley ( BEERDZ-lee; 21 August 1872 – 16 March 1898) was an English illustrator and author. His black ink drawings were influenced by Japanese woodcuts, and depicted the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the aesthetic movement, which also included Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler. Beardsley's contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau and poster styles was significant despite his early death from tuberculosis. He is one of the important Modern Style figures. == Early life, education, and early career == Beardsley was born in Brighton, Sussex, England, on 21 August 1872 and christened on 24 October 1872. His father, Vincent Paul Beardsley (1839–1909), was the son of a Clerkenwell jeweller; Vincent had no trade himself (partly owing to tuberculosis, from which his own father had died aged only 40), and relied on a private income from an inheritance that he received from his maternal grandfather, a property developer, when he was 21. Vincent's wife, Ellen Agnus Pitt (1846–1932), was the daughter of Surgeon-Major William Pitt of the Indian Army. The Pitts were a well-established and respected family in Brighton, and Beardsley's mother married a man of lesser social status than might have been expected. Soon after their wedding, Vincent was obliged to sell some of his property in order to settle a claim for his breach of promise of marriage from another woman, the widow of a clergyman, who claimed that he had promised to marry her.
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