Aubrey Beardsley

In the tales of King Arthur, the knight Tristan and the Irish princess Isolde were bound together by a love potion, with ultimately tragic results. Although Beardsley illustrated Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, a version of the medieval legend first published in the 15th century, the reference in this drawing is more likely to Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde, which was performed frequently in the 1890s.

Most of Beardsley’s drawings were made for illustration: Isolde was reproduced as a color lithograph in the periodical The Studio in 1895. ¤