A Japanese-inspired scene of a procession of visitors bringing gifts to the seated Madame Cigale.
Recto Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
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Recto Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College

This drawing illustrates a procession of 5 visitors bringing a variety of gifts to Madame Cigale, seated on the left. The visitors are of stereotypical Asian appearance, and their gifts include a hat, a bird, and flowers. The visitor at the front of the line bows submissively and holds out his gift, a pair of slippers. Madame Cigale’s large gown reveals an exposed breast, as she greets her visitors with a wave. The entire composition is modeled after Japanese paintings, the perimeter decorated with fanciful plants and creatures and with a linear wave pattern.

Gallery Text

Beardsley’s creative output consisted almost entirely of drawings, mainly for illustration. His brilliant and singular style stretched the limits of illustration, pushing the medium toward the abstract curvilinear design principles of art nouveau. When wedded to provocative subject matter, the combination of art-historical tribute and irreverence, the rigorous design, and the sensuality that characterizes his illustrations earned him the label “decadent.”

Beardsley’s debt to Japanese prints can be seen in The Birthday of Madame Cigale, a frieze of “strange creatures” bearing gifts for Madame Cigale (“cicada” in French). The illustration for True History, by the second-century Greek satirist Lucian, represents the author’s visit to the island of Dreams, where some of the dreams are “long, beautiful, and pleasing: others again are as short and deformed.” In The Mysterious Rose Garden, Beardsley makes use of both Christian and pagan symbols in an ambiguous yet strangely affecting echo of the Annunciation.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1943.645
People
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley, British (Brighton, England 1872 - 1898 Menton, France)
Title
The Birthday of Madame Cigale
Classification
Drawings
Work Type
drawing
Date
1892
Culture
British
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/297828

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Black ink, gray wash, white gouache, and graphite on white paper
Dimensions
24.9 x 39 cm (9 13/16 x 15 3/8 in.)

State, Edition, Standard Reference Number

Standard Reference Number
Zatlin 266

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
Accession Year
1943
Object Number
1943.645
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • Martin Birnbaum, Jacovleff and Other Artists, Paul A. Struck (New York, 1946), pl. 39
  • Joanna Selborne, ed., Life, Legend, Landscape: Victorian Drawings and Watercolours, exh. cat., The Courtauld Gallery (London, 2011), p. 132, note 7 (p. 131)
  • Linda Gertner Zatlin, Aubrey Beardsley: A Catalogue Raisonné, Yale University Press (U.S.) (New Haven and London, 2016), vol. 1, no. 266, pp. 148, 166-170, 434, repr. pp. 166-167, detail repr. pp. xx-xxi; vol. 2, p. 102
  • Stephen Calloway and Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, ed., Aubrey Beardsley, exh. cat., Tate Publishing (London, 2020), p. 31

Exhibition History

  • 32Q: 2100 19th Century, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 11/10/2015

Subjects and Contexts

  • Google Art Project

Verification Level

This record was created from historic documentation and may not have been reviewed by a curator; it may be inaccurate or incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu