Footnotes

A BURNE-JONES INFLUENCED STUDY FOR LE MORTE D'ARTHUR, the chapter-heading of Chapter II, Book XX, p. 909 of Vol. II, published in 1893-4. It is illustrated by Brian Reade, who believes that it may be one of the last done for the book; in other words during the period when Beardsley was tiring of the mammoth project and was turning his hand to other commissions, such as the illustrations for Wilde's Salome: ʻThis is a very loose, freehand drawing for Beardsley. It has a certain charm; but apart from the well, the imagery has been plagiarized from "L'Amant" in the series "The Romaunt of the Rose" by Burne-Jones, even to the gesture of the figure. The rose-bush and the figure are the other way round in "L'Amant" and of course very much more elaborate, while Beardsley's figure is behind the fence, not in front of it, and the face in the large rose in "L'Amant" has not been imitated. The drawing appeared in Art XII and may have been among the last done for Le Morte Darthur' (Plate 146, Note 142). (Although the Burne-Jones design is so different in so many ways, that the more charitable might describe Beardsley's debt as a case of possibly unconscious borrowing, rather than plagiarism.)

Burne-Jones was of course both a potent early influence on Beardsley and a generous supporter; added to which, Dent's illustrated Mallory could be described as a commercial exploitation of the genre established by recent Kelmscott Press books with their Burne-Jones woodcuts. But just at the time he was making his last Mallory drawings, in what has been seen as a form of artistic patricide, Beardsley was rejecting this faux-mediaeval Burne-Jonesian inheritance and producing another body of work, such as the Salome illustrations, which was to scandalise his old master (see Matthew Sturgis, Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography, 1998, pp. 156-7).

Our drawing was exhibited in the International Symbolist Exhibition, Beautiful Decadence, Tokyo, 1997-8, arranged by its then owner Victor Arwas (Case 21, Catalogue 46).