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Lot 85
BEARDSLEY (AUBREY) Autograph study of Paganini performing upon his violin, inscribed by Beardsley "PAGANINI" (with three letters in musical notation), [1886-88]
Amended
11 November 2015, 13:00 GMT
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £4,000 inc. premium
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BEARDSLEY (AUBREY)
Autograph study of Paganini performing upon his violin, inscribed by Beardsley "PAGANINI" (with three letters in musical notation), showing Paganini full length, in performance, his violin held to the right, wearing evening dress; inscribed on the reverse of the frame: "This drawing made for W.M. [?] Quirke by Aubrey Beardsley at the Grammar School Brighton when A.B. was 14 years./ Given to me by Mr Quirke in July 1914 & framed & mounted at my direction./ A.W. King"; pen-and-ink, on oatmeal paper laid onto card, two splits where originally folded and some fraying at edges and dust-staining, framed, 280 x 190mm., [1886-88]
Footnotes
A DRAWING BY THE FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD AUBREY BEARDSLEY OF THE DEMONIC NICOLO PAGANINI. This fine study, made for a master or fellow pupil at Brighton Grammar School, was afterwards given to Beardsley's Brighton housemaster, friend and mentor, A.W. King. It was first reproduced in half-tone in The Uncollected Works of Aubrey Beardsley (1925), No. 50, Pl. 11. Brian Reade, who reproduces the half-tone version rather than original drawing, dates it to 1888: 'At the time when this sketch was made, Beardsley had evolved a style of grotesque drawing quite distinct from his comic style, and somewhat sinister, as in this conception of Paganini' (Beardsley, 1967, Pl. and No. 11). Reade's dating is tentatively followed by Matthew Sturgis: 'Although it is difficult to establish an exact chronology of Beardsley's surviving BGS drawings, he appears to have made some advance in technique and ambition during 1888; portraits of Paganini and Sarah Bernhardt and an illustration for Congreve's Double Dealer display a more confident handling of line, a richer sense of detail and the awakening of his interest in the grotesque' (Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography, 1998, pp. 48-9). The testimony of A.W. King, Beardsley's Brighton housemaster, who did more than anyone to foster the schoolboy's artistic talent, in stating that he was fourteen-years-old, would suggest that the drawing was in fact executed in 1886 or 1887, his fourteenth birthday falling on 21 August 1886.
Beardsley had a lifelong interest in music and, like his sister Mabel, was a capable pianist; indeed, early in his career, he was thought of as being something of a musical, rather than artistic, prodigy: a well-attested anecdote has him entertaining his fellows on his first day at school by performing pieces of his own composition, and he was later allowed to play upon King's harmonium. He was, however, to give up performing in favour of drawing (Sturgis, pp. 30-35). Nevertheless, music continued to be a theme of his art, most famously, in his mature work, that of Wagner.
Saleroom notices
This drawing will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonne of Beardsley's works to be published in March 2016 by Yale University Press.