The Age of Enchantment: Beardsley, Dulac and their Contemporaries 1890–1930
Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 17 February
The Age of Enchantment: Beardsley, Dulac and their Contemporaries 1890–1930
Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 17 February
Taste is strictly divided over the enchanted visions currently on view at Dulwich. It seems that people are rarely indifferent to this kind of imagery; it either delights or revolts. I must admit that I went more in the spirit of inquiry than enthusiasm. I found a densely hung exhibition — it’s the kind of show you really ought to have a lorgnette for — which makes a surprisingly wide appeal, for the work on view is more varied than I’d anticipated.
The show begins with Beardsley and the Age of Decadence, illustrated by a wall of his drawings. These are not the naughty schoolboy ones, but the exquisite arrangements of line like ‘The Peacock Skirt’, ‘The Abbé’ and ‘The Battle of the Beaux and the Belles’, an illustration for Pope’s ‘Rape of the Lock’ which is a masterpiece of stippling.
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