{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O762489"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O762489/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2013GA5251/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2013GA5251/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"high","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2013GA5251","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2006AN9578","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2017JT8909","copyright":"©Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2019MB5410","copyright":"©Victoria & Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2019MB5411","copyright":"©Victoria & Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":{"_iiif_pres":"https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O762489/manifest.json","_alt_iiif_pres":[]}},"record":{"systemNumber":"O762489","accessionNumber":"E.518-1926","objectType":"Design","titles":[{"title":"The Yellow Book","type":"series title"}],"summaryDescription":"","physicalDescription":"Drawing in black ink depicting a woman wearing an elaborate hat browsing books outside a bookshop. In the doorway of the shop a pierrot figure is standing gazing genially at the woman. The scene is clearly supposed to be taking place at night due to the blackness of the surroundings and the brightness of the light emanating from the shop windows and the gas street lamp.","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Beardsley, Aubrey Vincent","id":"N1773"},"association":{"text":"artist","id":"AAT25103"},"note":""}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[{"text":"paper","id":"x30308"},{"text":"pen and Indian ink","id":"x47322"}],"techniques":[{"text":"drawing","id":"x32498"}],"materialsAndTechniques":"Pen and indian ink","categories":[{"text":"Designs","id":"THES48968"},{"text":"Drawings","id":"THES48966"},{"text":"Books","id":"THES48986"}],"styles":[],"collectionCode":{"text":"PDP","id":"THES48595"},"images":["2013GA5251","2006AN9578","2017JT8909","2019MB5410","2019MB5411"],"imageResolution":"high","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"LVLE","id":"THES49657"},"free":"","case":"I","shelf":"50","box":"B"}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"drawing","id":""}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"No","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"London","id":"x28980"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"c. March 1894","earliest":"1894-01-01","latest":"1894-04-30"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[],"creditLine":"Bequeathed by John Lane, Esq.","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Height","value":"240","unit":"mm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"2024","earliest":"2024-01-01","latest":"2024-12-31"},"part":"image","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"158","unit":"mm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"2024","earliest":"2024-01-01","latest":"2024-12-31"},"part":"image","note":""},{"dimension":"Height","value":"248","unit":"mm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"2024","earliest":"2024-01-01","latest":"2024-12-31"},"part":"sheet","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"162","unit":"mm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"2024","earliest":"2024-01-01","latest":"2024-12-31"},"part":"sheet","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"","marksAndInscriptions":[{"content":"","inscriber":{"name":{"text":"","id":""},"association":{"text":"","id":""}},"date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"description":"","interpretation":"","language":"","medium":"","method":"","position":"","script":"","translation":"","transliteration":"","type":"","note":"Signed in the lower right of the image with the artist's monogram"}],"objectHistory":"According to Stephen Calloway in his book <u>Aubrey Beardsley</u>. London: V & A Publications, 1998, pp. 106-107: 'The prospectus, an essential factor in the marketing of books at this date, clearly reveals the extent to which the new publication aimed to connect the new quarterly with the rarefied world of antiquarian books, fine editions and 'collectors items', as much as with the brasher, more 'modern' milieu of London in the nineties...For the prospectus Beardsley drew a remarkable cover, which introduced a number of significant new elements in his stylistic development. Technically audacious, it was among the first of a highly important group of 'night pieces', in which the artist employed his growing skill in the management of increasingly large areas of black-ink washes, played off against finely reserved white lines and razor sharp patches of light, to suggest the vivid qualities of the London street scene captured by the flickering intensity of the gas jets of the street lamps or illuminated by the cold light of the moon...This image for the prospectus played deliberately upon the equivocal nature of the messages that its subjects and details would send out to a middle-class audience. On the one hand it depicted a bookshop, a comfortable, cultural location, but showed it by night, when no respectable bookshop should be open. In fact the drawing depicts a shop very like the premises of Lane and Mathews in Vigo Street, to which Beardsley adds, it has been always been said, a caricature of Elkin Matthews himself as the genial, if oddly garbed, Watteauesque pierrot-bookseller in the doorway. The handling of the effect of the light emanating from the shop is quite masterful, suggesting with wonderfully observed precision the way in which at night-time a figure in the street appears silhouetted against the brightness of a lit up window; it gives the lie to the much-repeated idea that Beardsley was unaware of, or unable to compete with contemporary artistic developments that placed so much emphasis on the subtle rendering of unusual light effects...In Beardsley's scene there is only one customer, a woman of the 'advanced' kind we are to supposed, immaculately dressed in the severest black in the height of fashion of the moment, her tightly gloved hand poised to exercise her own literary choice, rather than waiting to be offered a book to read. Elegant and assertive, she proclaims her, at best, dubious social position by the mere fact of her nocturnal shopping expedition, alone and unchaperoned in the street. As an image of English womanhood it was almost guaranteed to shock, but before long this very distinct and very modern type would automatically be referred to as the 'Beardsley Woman', a variant sub-species of that other alarming phenomenon of the period, the 'New Woman'.","historicalContext":"","briefDescription":"Drawing by Aubrey Beardsley, design for the front cover of the prospectus of 'The Yellow Book', vol. I, April 1894, published by Elkin Mathews and John Lane of the Bodley Head, pen and ink and wash on paper, London 1894","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"<u>Victoria and Albert Museum, Department of Engraving, Illustration and Design and Department of Paintings, Accessions 1926</u>, London: Board of Education, 1927."},{"reference":{"text":"Calloway, Stephen. <u>Aubrey Beardsley</u>. London: V & A Publications, 1998. 224pp, illus. ISBN: 1851772197.","id":"AUTH332149"},"details":"p. 106","free":""},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"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\r\n\r\nThe entry is as follows:\r\n\r\n884\r\nProspectus cover\r\nc.March 1894\r\nVictoria and Albert Museum, London (E.518-1926)\r\n\r\nPen, brush and Indian ink over pencil on white wove paper secured to backing with slotted hinges; 9 3/4  x 6 3/8 inches (248 x 162 mm); signed.\r\n\r\nINSCRIPTIONS: Recto inscribed by the artist in inked capital letters: THE YELLOW BOOK / AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY. / BOOKS [two fragmentary letters, probably B and O for the beginning of the word ‘bought’] / [signature device] / PRICE / FIVE SHILLINGS / ELKIN MATHEWS / AND JOHN LANE. / THE BODLEY HEAD / VIGO ST. LONDON / APRIL 15TH / MDCCCXCIV.; Verso in blue crayon: Lane / [in black ink]: E.518-1926 / [stamp of]: V.A.M. / [circled in red over orangecrayon]: 46 / [in pencil]: X / E.518-1926. \r\n\r\nFLOWERS: Rose [ball type] (love, passion).\r\n\r\nPROVENANCE: John Lane; bequeathed to Victoria and Albert Museum in 1926.  \r\n\r\nEXHIBITION: Berlin 1903-4 (128); London 1904a (33); Paris 1907 (71); New York 1923-4 (44); Milwaukee, WI 1924 (44); London 1966-8 (394); Tokyo 1983 (62); Munich 1984 (137); Rome 1985 (6.1); London 1993 (105).\r\n\r\nLITERATURE: Vallance 1897 (p. 206), 1909 (no. 89.i); Gallatin 1945 (no. 926); ‘Book Collector’ spring 1952 (p. 30); Reade 1967 (p. 344, n. 342); Weintraub 1976 (p. 102); Wilson 1983 (plate 18); Fletcher 1987 (pp. 97-8); Zatlin 1990 (p. 101); Samuels Lasner 1995 (no. 65a); Zatlin 1997 (pp. 155-7, 159).\r\n\r\nREPRODUCED: On cover of prospectus for the ‘Yellow Book’, Volume. 1, April 1984; ‘Early Work’ 1899 (no. 44); Reade 1967 (plate 343); Clark 1979 (plate 30); Wilson 1983 (plate 18).\r\n\r\nWhen the prospectus advertising the ‘Yellow Book’ Volume I, April 1894 appeared on bookstalls, its cover drawing created a stir, for in several ways it subverted the traditional nineteenth-century image of the woman with a book. This image represented women holding open books at the level of their genitalia, signalling their sexual availability. In contrast, Beardsley’s woman is actively examining book titles, and through her Beardsley suggests that the ‘enterprising young woman who is free to decide what she reads will be interested in just this sort of periodical’ (Reade 1967, p.344, n.342). At first glance one may imagine some parallels between her and Toulouse-Lautrec’s depictions of Parisian demi-mondaines (Wilson 1983, plate 18), but this emancipated and stylish woman concentrates on the volumes in the bin, she does not solicit custom. Not only is she out without a chaperone at night, but she ignores the proprietor of the bookshop, an indication that she will choose her own books - they will not be chosen for her by a father or husband (Zatlin 1990, p. 101). Beardsley also portrayed her far differently from the book-collecting New Woman, who was frequently shown as a mannish matron (see, for example, ‘Pall Mall Budget’, 23 February 1893, p. 288, in which Beardsley’s drawing of pilgrims [no. 294 above] appeared on p. 270). The elderly shopkeeper, ‘fancifully depicted in Pierrot costume, and with a look of ineffable disgust on his face, may well be Elkin Mathews’, who [compared to John Lane, his partner at the Bodley Head] ‘was somewhat apprehensive and prudish’ (‘Book Collector’ spring 1952, p. 30; Reade 1967, p. 344, n.342).\r\n\tBeardsley’s allusion to Mathews as a disgusted Pierrot may recall the bitterness growing between the two partners, who would split five months later, in September. Although Elkin Mathews was still the senior member of the Bodley Head when the first two numbers of the ‘Yellow Book’ were published, Lane would deliberately exclude him from the dinner in April 1894, which celebrated the publication of the first number of the ‘Yellow Book’. Lane told those who protested Mathews’s absence that he was not interested in the magazine. Mathews later indignantly responded to Lane’s fabrication in a letter to a Dr Brushfield, dated 7 February 1895, writing: ‘I could have attended the dinner with the greatest ease in the world; i had absolute leisure that evening, and there was not the slightest colour for him [Lane] to make such a statement. He had evidently represented to the Editors that he alone was the partner interested in the working of the ‘Yellow Book’, and they did not take the trouble to act otherwise’ (RUL-EMA MS392, also quoted in Nelson ‘Elkin Mathews’ 1989, p. 16).\r\n\tThe public, however, was either unaware or uninterested in squabbles between the partners. A parody of the drawing for the prospectus which accompanied ‘Granta’s article ‘The Yellow Boot’, stresses public concern for morals; the woman is an aged cancan dancer who has kicked the proprietor’s glasses off his face (21 April 1894, p. 271). The books in the bin, including ‘Granta’, the ‘Yellow Boot’ and ‘The Law of Libel’, are on sale for twopence halfpenny. In contrast, Beardsley’s is a work in which the woman’s hands are theatrically expressive, the repetition of which will become a hallmark of his style with symbolic overtones (Zatlin 1997, pp. 155-7, 159). The setting of this design is Beardsley’s ‘fanciful variation’ on the Bodley Head Vigo Street front shop window (Weitraub 1976, p. 102). For further comment on the figure of Pierrot in Beardsley’s work, see no. 262 above.\r\nOn 19 December 1932, Sotheby’s sold (152a) a copy of the prospectus with the signature of Beardsley and a few other contributors  - Arthur Waugh, William Watson, Walter Sickert, George Thomson and H[ubert] Crackenthorpe.\r\n"}],"production":"","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[{"text":"Bodley Head","id":"AUTH323212"}],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[{"text":"books","id":"AAT28051"},{"text":"bookshop","id":"AAT5297"},{"text":"woman","id":"x35642"}],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":["The Yellow Book"],"galleryLabels":[],"partNumbers":["E.518-1926"],"accessionNumberNum":"518","accessionNumberPrefix":"E","accessionYear":1926,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":[],"recordModificationDate":"2026-05-12","recordCreationDate":"2009-06-30","availableToBook":false}}