I accidentally came across a book on Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898), an Art Nouveau illustrator, at my local library and was subsequently amazed. I love his use of line and shape and black and white! Check it out & click for bigger versions:
Aubrey Beardsley — Black Domino
A lot of articles or blurbs about him say he’s infamous for his “erotic illustrations.” While his drawings for Lysistrata by Aristophanes do feature enormous phalli, I’d characterize them more as grotesque, not erotic. Wikipedia quotes him (uncited) as saying, “If I am not grotesque I am nothing.” In any case, most of his illustrations and the ones featured here are quite pretty and striking, far from grotesque.

Aubrey Beardsley — Barge, from the Rape of the Lock
Definitely click on the above and below pieces to see them larger on Flickr. Look at the detail of the trees in the background. Look at it! White space is glorious.

Aubrey Beardsley — Toilet (from the Rape of the Lock)
Aubrey Beardsley — Volpone
Aubrey Beardsley — Oriental Dancer
Aubrey Beardsley — Isolde
Crappy scanner. Sorry. You can Google “Aubrey Beardsley” and it will come up with a better Isolde image, along with Peacock Skirt. The two are, I think, his most famous illustrations. I wanted to post images that were maybe lesser known.

Aubrey Beardsley — Lady Combing
Aubrey Beardsley — Twins

Look at those swoops of black and white on their coats. Mmmmm. I want a muff. Doesn’t this seem like it should be from the 1930s? Aubrey, dahling, you’re ahead of your time.

Aubrey Beardsley — Oscar Wilde
This image of Oscar Wilde—and other artistic elements, like the use of borders and the way faces are drawn—reminds me a lot of Perfect Stars, one of my fave webcomics.

Aubrey Beardsley — Remorse
If you’re into skeletons, dinosaurs, and creepy-ass-in-a-good-way art, please for the love of God look at the work of Dan McCarthy. My favorite print of his is 3 of Hearts. Anyway, back to Aubrey.

Aubrey Beardsley — Sir Tristram
Aubrey (I like how I’m on a first-name basis with this dude) died young at 25, but he did a lot of work in his lifetime for magazines (like The Savoy) and other publications (like Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé). He was also the art editor for the literary magazine Yellow Book (at least until Wilde was arrested, according to Wikipedia).

Aubrey Beardsley — Dame aux Camelias
The pattern of La Dame’s skirt reminds me of Lara Cameron’s River Stones.

An aside: Hey, art students from all over the world who only seem to download the semi-nude Oriental Dancer. What’s up. Feel free to poke around the rest of my website or leave me a comment. It makes me a little self-conscious that most of my site traffic is just you guys Googling Aubrey Beardsley…