1896
Death of Pierrot - The Savoy
In this illustration of the deathbed of Pierrot the clown for The Savoy magazine in London, Beardsley depicts what he described as "strange hermaphroditic characters wandering about in Pierrot costume." Characteristic of the Decadent notion that life is a performance; here the artist creates a theatrical atmosphere. The death-white face of Pierrot resigned to his bed, his clothes cast aside on a nearby chair, is visited by the lively, tip-toeing characters of Arlecchino, Pantaleone, Il Dottore, and Columbina. The intricately detailed masquerade costumes of these latter figures, their exaggerated posturing, and their attempt to implicate the viewer with their shushing gesture lends a humorous quality to an otherwise solemn scene.
The figure of Pierrot, a sad pantomime clown who pines for love, was popular among the early modernists, and appeared in works by Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and Paul Verlaine, among others. Pierrot was a popular figure for so many because his identity was malleable. For the Decadents, Pierrot represented their disillusionment with Kantean idealism; Symbolists sympathized with his suffering and sensitivity; while others used him in their quests to explore form, line, and color. The downtrodden Pierrot appeared more than once in Beardsley's work, including his illustrations for poet Ernest Dowson's Pierrot of the Minute (1897), in which the clown is obsessively associated with the color white and portrayed as pale, sad, and alone. In this image, the clown displays a poignant knowledge of his own death - a reflection perhaps of the artist's own perceived mortality. Indeed, at the time Beardsley created this, his health was fading. Increasingly bedridden and unable to work, Beardsley suffered from consumption for two more years until he died at age 25.
Illustrated Magazine - The Savoy, 6
