“The Peacock Skirt”
I love the movement in this piece.
“The Peacock Skirt” is an 1894 Art Nouveau style woodblock print on Japanese vellum by the English Aesthetic artist, Aubrey Beardsley. It is one of several images Beardsley created to illustrate Oscar Wilde’s 1891 play, Salomé. These illustrations helped cement Beardsley’s career.
Wilde’s Salomé was regarded as a scandalous play. It was a one act tragedy that told the story of Salomé, the stepdaughter of King Herod, and her request for the head of John the Baptist after performing the dance of the seven veils. The play was originally written in French by Wilde himself. It was first produced in France in 1896. It was banned in England, so its first performance there was not until 1931.
Although this image is one of Beardsley’s more well-known works, it upset several well-respected peers. “The Peacock Skirt” is often regarded as Beardsley’s interpretation of James Whistler’s work, “The Princess from the Land of Porcelain”. Whistler was very unhappy with what he thought a blatant copy of his painting. The critics, however, loved Beardsley’s work, and gave it much praise.
Beardsley received so much praise this it upset Oscar Wilde, who thought the illustrations were getting more notice than the play they were meant to illustrate. Wilde said “I admire, I do not like Aubrey’s illustrations. They are too Japanese, while my play is Byzantine”. This commissioned work contained several risqué illustrations which earned Beardsley a name and reputation.
Original woodblock prints of “The Peacock Skirt” are located in several institutions, including the Fogg Museum of the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England.
For more on Aubrey Beardsley, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
