{"product_id":"nichols-h-s-aubrey-beardsley-attributed-fifty-drawings-by-aubrey-beardsley-selected-from-the-collection-owned-by-mr-h-s-nichols","title":"NICHOLS, H.S.; Aubrey BEARDSLEY ( attributed ). Fifty Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley Selected from the Collection owned by Mr H.S. Nichols.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003e‘Feeble, Pretentious’ Forgeries\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNICHOLS, H.S.; Aubrey BEARDSLEY (\u003ci\u003eattributed\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Fifty Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley Selected from the Collection owned by Mr H.S. Nichols. \u003ci\u003eNY: H.S. Nichols.\u003c\/i\u003e 1920\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4to. Original black cloth with elaborate gilt floriate design and lettering to upper board, spine lettered directly in gilt; pp. [7], [1 (blank)], 50 ff. plates, each preceded by leaf of text with text to rectos only; wanting the rare dust-jacket, spine a little sunned, front hinge tender; internally very clean; a very good copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNumber 366 of limited edition of 500, signed by the publisher, of a notable forgery of Beardsley’s work by Harry Sidney Nichols (1864–1941), British pornographer and erstwhile colleague of Aubrey Beardsley’s publisher Leonard Smithers.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNichols founded the Erotika Biblion Society with Smithers in 1888, the partnership ending with Smithers’s death in 1907. The following year, Nichols fled to New York in 1908 to avoid British obscenity laws and there continued to hustle his way around the erotic literature market. This book, designed to exploit the fashionable interest in Beardsley’s work, was his greatest wheeze: the publication of fifty apparently unpublished illustrations by Beardsley that he had uncovered. He launched these plates in an exhibition in New York in 1919 and this lavish limited edition followed a year later.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe problem was that the plates were all forgeries. Critics, including Gallatin and Pennell, were quick to deride these efforts as fake.  Nichols replied to his critics that he had more knowledge of Beardsley than even Leonard Smithers, ‘but I absolutely decline to make known to the world what I do know’ (\u003ci\u003eEvening Post,\u003c\/i\u003e 18 April 1919).   It did little good. C. Lewis Hind, the founder of \u003ci\u003eThe Studio\u003c\/i\u003e and therefore well acquainted with Beardsley’s work, wrote in the same paper that the pictures ‘are a travesty of his work; they are an insult to his memory […] These feeble, pretentious things by Beardsley? Pooh!’ (‘Aubrey Beardsley’, \u003ci\u003eEvening Post\u003c\/i\u003e, 28 May 1919).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe identity of the actual forger remains  a mystery, but what is certain is that by 1919 there were plenty of Beardsley forgeries in circulation, mostly done for Leonard Smithers, and it is highly likely that Nichols would have been able to access the stock through his association with his old fellow in erotic publishing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSamuels Lasner notes that ‘ According to Gallatin, Haldane MacFall believed them to be the work of “at least two forgers,” probably Nichols and one of his associates’. Whoever the artist and however poor the artwork, the result was the same. Nicols made a tidy $7,500, the equivalent of $125,000 today, from the sale of the books.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSamuels Lasner 222.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125419\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64326470238585,"sku":"2125419","price":225.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125419b.jpg?v=1787325028","url":"https:\/\/sotherans.co.uk\/products\/nichols-h-s-aubrey-beardsley-attributed-fifty-drawings-by-aubrey-beardsley-selected-from-the-collection-owned-by-mr-h-s-nichols","provider":"Sotherans","version":"1.0","type":"link"}