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Oct 7, 2009

The Toilet, from The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope

c. 1895–96

Aubrey Beardsley

(British, 1872–1898)

England, 19th century

Pen and black ink with traces of graphite underdrawing

Sheet: 25.6 x 17.4 cm (10 1/16 x 6 7/8 in.)

Dudley P. Allen Fund 1953.136

Location

not on view

Did you know?

After a rapid rise to fame and notoriety, Aubrey Beardsley produced hundreds of drawings before falling victim to tuberculosis at the age of 25.

Description

In this drawing, Aubrey Beardsley illustrates an early scene in Alexander Pope’s satirical masterpiece The Rape of the Lock (1712) in which the heroine, Belinda, primps in her boudoir. Reflecting the poem’s emphasis on contrived rather than natural beauty, the drawing is densely layered with artifice. A view of an idyllic garden with a cupola-topped pavilion is glimpsed not through a window as it would first seem, but on a folding screen. The bejeweled bottles littering the table serve as emblems of Belinda’s vanity.

Provenance

?-1953

(R. A. Walker, Bedford, England, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH)

1953-

Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Citations

Pope, Alexander. The Rape of the Lock: An Heroi-comical Poem in Five Cantos. London: Leonard Smithers, 1896. Reproduced: p. 8 archive.org

Marillier, H.C.. The Later Work of Aubrey Beardsley. New York: John Lane, 1920. Reproduced: pl. 88

Hind, Lewis C.. The Uncollected Work of Aubrey Beardsley. London: John Lane; New York: Dodd, Mead and Company,1925. Mentioned: p. ix, no. 16

Gallatin, A. E. Aubrey Beardsley; Catalogue of Drawings and Bibliography. New York: Grolier Club, 1945. Mentioned: p. 63, no. 1036

Walker, R.A.. The Best of Beardsley. London: Bodley Head, 1948. Reproduced: pl. 61

Hölscher, Eberhard von. Aubrey Beardsley. Hamburg: Ernst Hauswedell, 1949. Reproduced: p. 40

Reade, Brian and Frank Dickinson. Aubrey Beardsley ; Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Exh. Cat. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1966. Mentioned: p. 227, no. 506

Reade, Brian. Aubrey Beardsley. New York: The Viking Press, 1967. Reproduced: p. 352, no. 406

Ross, Robert Baldwin. Aubrey Beardsley. New York: Jack Brussel,1967. Reproduced: p. 26; Mentioned: p. 102, no. 144

Reade, Brian and Raymond Rohauer. Aubrey Beardsley. Exh. Cat. New York: Foundation for Modern Art, 1967. Mentioned: no. 199

Halsband, Robert. The Rape of the Lock and Its Illustrations, 1714-1896. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Reproduced: p. 98, no. 48

Wilson, Simon. Beardsley. Oxford: Phaidon, 1983. Reproduced: fig. 29

Miller, J. Hillis. "The Mirror's Secret: Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Double Work of Art." In Contemporary Critics Look at Victorian Poetry, 333-49. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1991. Mentioned: p. 342, 348; Reproduced: fig. 8 www.jstor.org

Takashina, Shūji and Nobuyuki Senzoku, eds. Western Art: Fin du siècle and Symbolism. Vol. 24 of New History of World Art. Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1996. Reproduced: no. 177

Zatlin, Linda Gertner. Aubrey Beardsley: A Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. Mentioned: pp. 215-16; Reproduced: p. 215, fig. 979

Exhibition history

Aubrey Beardsley. Gallery of Modern Art, New York (February 14 - April 9, 1967).

Aubrey Beardsley. The Victoria and Albert Museum, London (1966).

Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (organizer) (May 19-September 19, 1966); The Gallery of Modern Art, New York, NY (February 13-April 13, 1967).

Aubrey Beardsley. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (organizer) (December 11, 1967-March 4, 1968).

From Block Books to Baskin: Artists as Illustrators. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 13-August 17, 1986).

Directions in Drawing II: The Human Figure. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 5, 1991-January 12, 1992).

British Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art . The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 10-May 26, 2013).

Cite this page

{{cite web|title=The Toilet, from The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope|url=https://clevelandart.org/art/1953.136|author=Aubrey Beardsley|year=c. 1895–96|access-date=10 June 2023|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

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The Toilet, from The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope

The Toilet, from The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope

Aubrey Beardsley

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