Top 15 Aubrey Beardsley Quotes

How few of our young English impressionists knew the difference between a palette and a picture! However, I believe that Walter Sickert did — sly dog!

Pope has more virulence and less vehemence than any of the great satirists. His character of Sporus is the perfection of satirical writing. The very sound of words scarify before the sense strikes.

When an Englishman has professed his belief in the supremacy of Shakespeare amongst all poets, he feels himself excused from the general study of literature. He also feels himself excused from the particular study of Shakespeare.

The only place in London where one can forget that it is Sunday.

One’s ears are weary of the voice of the art teacher who sits like the parrot on his perch, learning the jargon of the studios, making but poor copy and calling it criticism. We have had enough of their omniscience, their parade of technical knowledge, and their predilection for the wrong end of the stick.

What view the bill-sticker and sandwich man take of the subject I have yet to learn. The first is, at least, no bad substitute for a hanging committee, and the clothes of the second are better company than somebody else’s picture, and less obtrusive than a background of stamped magenta paper.

The poster first of all justified its existence on the grounds of utility, and should it further aspire to beauty of line and colour, may not our hoardings claim kinship with the galleries, and the designers of affiches pose proudly in the public eye as the masters of Holland Road or Bond Street Barbizon (and, recollect, no gate money, no catalogue)?

Advertisement is an absolute necessity of modern life, and if it can be made beautiful as well as obvious, so much the better for the makers of soap and the public who are likely to wash.

The general opinion appears to be that it is very funny to make yourself out as fast or as foolish as possible; though even worse than this is the painful orthodoxy of those individuals who claim Shakespeare for their favourite poet, Beethoven for their favourite composer, and Raphael for their favourite painter.

I have always done my sketches, as people would say, for the fun of it... I have worked to amuse myself, and if it has amused the public as well, so much the better for me.

Of course, I have one aim, the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing.

I think the title page I drew for Salomé was after all "impossible". You see booksellers couldn't stick it up in their windows.

What is a portrait good for, unless it shows just how the subject was seen by the painter? In the old days before photography came in a sitter had a perfect right to say to the artist: "Paint me just as I am." Now if he wishes absolute fidelity he can go to the photographer and get it.

I shall not live much longer than did Keats.

There was a young man with a salary, Who had to do drawings for Malory; When they asked him for more, He replied, 'Why? Sure </br>You've enough as it is for a gallery.'