Aubrey Beardsley drew this illustration for a murder mystery of the same name in, Tales of Edgar Allen Poe. In the short story, first published in 1843, the narrator relates how he killed his wife, bricked up the body in a wall of their house and fooled the police. But the black cat cried like an infant from behind the wall where it had been inadvertently entombed. When the police dismantled the wall, they found the cat sitting on the head of the corpse.

Beardsley was a young artist and book illustrator who gained notoriety for many of his works and was a leading proponent of what was called the "decadent" movement. He was largely self-taught and his impact, considering the brevity of his life, is astonishing. His first commission came at the age of 20 and entailed over 300 illustrations for an edition of Thomas Malory's Morte D'arthur.

A highly original creator, he transformed the art of illustration and profoundly influenced artists of his own and subsequent generations. One of the greatest of the Symbolists and a master of pen and ink, Beardsley developed a highly original, formally elegant style, inspired in part by Greek vase painting, in which ornamental rhythm of line combines with a perverse and wickedly satiric imagination to create unforgettable images, often hilarious, and sometimes deeply moving. His expert draftsmanship made his drawings particularly suitable to the technical advances in printing at the end of the nineteenth century.

Frame : 3/4" black wood with a fluted edge, Size : 14 x 19 1/4

Price: $120.00

Availability: Usually ships in one to two weeks

Product #: FR0014