Live Auction 15992Important Photographs from the Collection of Donald and Alice Lappé
FREDERICK H. EVANS (1853–1943)
Lot 328

FREDERICK H. EVANS (1853–1943)

Double Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley, 1894

Closed10 October 2017

Price Realised

USD 37,500

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FREDERICK H. EVANS (1853–1943)
Double Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley, 1894
one platinum print and one photogravure, together on layered mount
each blindstamped photographer's monogram (primary mount, recto); signed, titled and numbered ' - 20 sets only - 8' in ink on an affixed label (tertiary mount, verso)
platinum print [hands to face]:
image/sheet: 5 3/8 x 3 7/8 in. (13.6 x 9.8 cm.)
primary mount: 6 3/8 x 4 3/8 in. (16.2 x 11 cm.)
secondary mount: 6 1/2 x 4 1/2 in. (16.5 x 11.4 cm.)

photogravure:
image/sheet: 4 7/8 x 3 3/4 in. (12.3 x 9.5 cm.)
primary mount: 5 7/8 x 4 1/4 in. (14.9 x 10.8 cm.)
secondary mount: 6 x 4 3/8 in. (15.2 x 11.1 cm.)

tertiary mount: 13 x 20 3/4 in. (33 x 52.7 cm.)
This work is number eight from an edition of twenty.

Christie's, London, May 3, 1995, lot 63;
acquired from the above sale by the present owner.

Specialist note

The illustrator, Aubrey Beardsley, was a frequent visitor to Frederick H. Evans' bookshop on Queen Street, Cheapside, London. Eventually the two artists would become friends, leading to the sitting for this double portrait. In the monograph, Frederick Evans, Beaumont Newhall mentions the sitting and a friend of the two who remembered that Evans 'spent...hours wandering around the gaunt youth, wondering what on earth to do with him, when Beardsley, getting tired, relaxed and took the pose which Evans immediately seized' (The Photographic Journal, February, 1945, p. 36). Later the same year as these portraits, Beardsley wrote to Evans 'I think the photos are splendid; couldn't be better. I am looking forward to getting my copies'.