Frontispiece Design; verso: Sketch of a Dress 1894

Curator: Immediately, a hushed theatricality strikes me. The stark black and white, the stage-like architecture... Editor: That's fitting. We're observing Aubrey Beardsley's "Frontispiece Design," a drawing from around 1895, now held at the Harvard Art Museums. The dimensions are roughly 30 by 18 centimeters. Curator: Those doves, the fountain—they suggest idealized love, perhaps even a courtly romance. But there's a certain… stillness. Almost frozen. Editor: The lack of shading, the sharp delineation of form, certainly contributes to that. Beardsley masterfully manipulates line to create a sense of depth and volume, doesn’t he? Curator: Indeed, the formal rigor almost overwhelms the potential sentiment. The rigid lines of the architecture versus the soft curves of the figure create a compelling tension. What do you think? Editor: Perhaps that's precisely the point. Beardsley frequently challenged conventions, and here he might be subverting expectations of romantic imagery with a highly stylized structure. Curator: An elegant dance between emotion and intellect. Editor: Precisely! A visual riddle rendered with impeccable precision.