The Masque of the Red Death, for Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tales of Mystery and the Imagination,” Chicago, 1895–96

The Masque of the Red Death, for Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tales of Mystery and the Imagination,” Chicago, 1895–96

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Beardsley here responds to a story by Poe that describes a Prince and his courtiers who have taken refuge from the plague in an abbey. Months of revelry culminate in a masked ball, marked at midnight by the appearance of "a masked figure...tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head and toe in the habiliments of the grave." The image closely follows Poe’s text but innovatively crops the form to suggest the arrival of a sinister force, with the figure cast as a ghostly Pierrot and the revelers dressed as Commedia dell’ Arte figures. This is one of four drawings that Beardsley made to illustrate a new American edition of Poe's "Tales of Mystery and the Imagination," receiving a commission from the Chicago publisher Stone and Kimball in December 1893. The artist responded that he believed the material offered "an admirable chance of picture making," began work in February 1894, and completed four of eight requested designs. Related sets of prints were issued in portfolios to accompany deluxe two volume Japanese vellum sets of the text published in 1895-96.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Masque of the Red Death, for Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tales of Mystery and the Imagination,” Chicago, 1895–96The Masque of the Red Death, for Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tales of Mystery and the Imagination,” Chicago, 1895–96The Masque of the Red Death, for Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tales of Mystery and the Imagination,” Chicago, 1895–96The Masque of the Red Death, for Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tales of Mystery and the Imagination,” Chicago, 1895–96The Masque of the Red Death, for Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tales of Mystery and the Imagination,” Chicago, 1895–96

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.