[BEARDSLEY, Aubrey.] Sale Number 1411 … Forty-Three Original Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley. The Collection of Frederick H. Evans of London

Evans’s Beardsleys at Auction

[BEARDSLEY, Aubrey.] Sale Number 1411 … Forty-Three Original Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley. The Collection of Frederick H. Evans of London New York: The Anderson Galleries. 1919.

8vo. Publisher’s printed self-wrappers, stapled as issued; pp. 10, [2 (blank)]; light central creasing, short split to wrappers at head; pencil or charcoal staining to rear inner cover and a few smudges to previous page of text; a good copy; contemporary pencil markings throughout with a few prices to p. 8.

Exhibition catalogue for the 20 March 1919 sale of forty-three original drawings by Beardsley from the collection of photographer Frederick H. Evans.

‘Beardsley drawings are very rarely offered for sale, and it is believed that Mr. John Lane’s large collection was destroyed by fire at Leipzig; in which case such an opportunity as the present cannot again occur. With each of these drawings there is a written guarantee signed by Mr. Evans’ (p. 5).

A friend of George Bernard Shaw, Evans was a proprietor of Jones’ and Evans’ Bookshop near the Guildhall in Cheapside until 1898, when he turned to photography full-time. The shop was ‘but a minute’s walk for Beardsley within a twelvemonth of his coming to London town …

‘Here Beardsley would turn in after his city work was done, as well as at the luncheon hour, to discuss the new books; and thereby won into the friendship of Frederick Evans who was early interested in him […] [Beardsley] would take a few drawings he made at this time and discuss them with Frederick Evans. Soon they were on so friendly a footing that Evans would “swap” the books for which the youth craved in exchange for drawings’ (MacFall, p. 39.). Indeed, it was Evans who secured Beardsley’s first commission, recommending him to J.M. Dent for Malory’s Morte d’Arthur.

OCLC and Library Hub find no copies in the UK.

Samuels Lasner 164. See MacFall, Aubrey Beardsley: the Clown, the Harlequin, the Pierrot of His Age (1927).

SKU: 2125994