MUTHER, Richard (editor); Rudolf KLEIN. Die Kunst … Aubrey Beardsley … mit acht Vollbildern in Strichätzung. Zweite unveränderte Auflage. [Half-title:] Die Kunst. Sammlung illustrierter Monographien … fünfter Band.

Beardsley in Berlin

MUTHER, Richard (editor); Rudolf KLEIN. Die Kunst … Aubrey Beardsley … mit acht Vollbildern in Strichätzung. Zweite unveränderte Auflage. [Half-title:] Die Kunst. Sammlung illustrierter Monographien … fünfter Band. [Wittenberg: Herrosé and Ziemsen for] Berlin: Julius Ward. S.a. [1903?]

4to; Publisher’s dove-grey boards lettered in black and gilt and illustrated to a foliate design in gilt, neatly rebacked in pale grey cloth at an early date; pp. [6], 51, [3], lithographic frontispiece by Beardsley mounted to olive paper lettered in blue, and a further 7 lithographic plates, title and half-title lettered in red and black, publisher’s red and black woodcut ‘Ex Libris’ to front pastedown and printer’s device to front free endpaper verso, red woodcut initials.

Second edition, a reprint of the first (1902), of this essay on Beardsley by the German art historian Rudolf Klein Diepold (1871–1925).

The frontispiece (Beardsley’s ‘Portrait of Himself), mounted to olive paper, was reproduced by permission of John Lane. German art critic and art historian Richard Muther (1860–1909) established Die Kunst in 1902, a series of artist monographs featuring contributors such as Rilke, who contributed a volume on Rodin in 1903, and Julius Meier-Graefe, who wrote on Manet in the same year.

The series profiled, amongst others, Lucas Cranach, Burne-Jones (by Malcolm Bell and translated by Rudolf Klein, the author of the present work on Beardsley), Max Klinger, Leonardo da Vinci, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Many of the early issues went through as many as five editions.

Brummer IV, p. 7; Gallatin, p. 77; not in Samuels Lasner.

SKU: 2126025