135

  • The Peacock Skirt, from "Salome"

  • 1894
  • Aubrey Beardsley (British 1872-1898)
  • Lithograph, Salome: A Tragedy in One Act by Oscar Wilde and Alfred Douglas, Plate 143
  • 27.8 x 21.9 cm., 10-15/16 x 8-5/8" sheet
  • Catherine Carter Goebel, Paul A. Anderson Chair in the Arts Purchase, Paul A. Anderson Art History Collection, Augustana College 2009.9

Essay by Larry E. Scott, Professor Emeritus of Scandinavian Studies

Beardsley, Aubrey. "The Peacock Skirt," illustration to Oscar Wilde's play, Salome, originally written in French (1892) and translated by Lord Alfred Douglas into English. The translation (heavily revised by Wilde) was originally published by Elkin Mathews and John Lane, London (1894).

The Peacock Skirt is Beardsley's sly and wicked double parody of two of his era's aesthetic icons. It is, on the one hand, a brilliant black-and-white inversion of James McNeill Whistler's 1863 painting La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine (The Princess of the Land of Porcelain) which had (and still has) pride of place above the mantle in Frederick R. Leyland's magnificent Peacock Room of 1876-7 (decorated by Whistler). Beardsley has reversed the figure and stripped her of color and most of her feminine attributes, but he has exaggerated the original's skirt with its flamboyant peacock-feather design while simultaneously breaking up the image into its component decorative shapes.

On the other hand, the drawing is also an unnervingly accurate personification of the central motive in Oscar Wilde's play. While Beardsley was not fond of the work or its author, his illustrations soon made both Wilde and Salome infamous and unforgettable. At the same time, Beardsley's name became ineradicably linked with Wilde's, and the latter's trial and disgrace in 1895 proved Beardsley's downfall as well. What exactly are we looking at in this image, besides a swirling peacock-feather emblazoned skirt?

The figure on the left is clearly Salome, daughter of Herodias, the wife of Herod Antipas, Tetrarch (or ruler of the divided kingdom) of Judea and Salome's stepfather. But to whom is she speaking so earnestly? Most readers assumed that the slight figure on the right must be John the Baptist (called by Wilde Iokanaan, the Hebrew form of his name). Yet there is no instance in the play of Iokanaan looking directly at Salome or being in any way cowed by her as he so obviously is in Beardsley's drawing. Indeed, Iokanaan forbids Salome to look upon him and spurns her sexual advances, calling her, among other things, "Whore of Babylon!" But Salome DOES speak intimately, almost hypnotically, to the young Syrian captain, Narraboth, beseeching him to release Iokanaan from captivity: "Thou wilt do this thing for me, Narraboth..I have ever been kind toward thee. Thou wilt do this thing for me." The look of dismay on the young man's face and Salome's aggressive, threatening, demanding posture make it probable that it is this moment in the play that Beardsley is addressing in The Peacock Skirt, leaving the confrontation of Salome and Iokanaan for another drawing (John and Salome).