2-880-169 - Shirley Markham Collection/Heritage Images

Alberich, from The Savoy No. 8, 1896. 'Another drawing for Das Rheingold. It has the charm of a Japanese netsuke and reminds one of an earlier drawing, The Glutton in Hell...To this consummate skill was added an imagination hitherto unknown and undreamt of in the staid, prosperous and smug later nineteenth century. Demon-ridden it may be, but we have to go back to Hieronymus Bosch to find anything comparable...Over a blank white paper come a smirking, creeping, posturing devil horde of things, groteque, weird, macabre, sinister, misgiving and alarming...' Published in "The Best of Beardsley" edited by R. A. Walker, [The Bodley Head, London, 1948]