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Princess Salome, wearing a long, dazzling, peacock-patterned robe, leans down to speak to a young man.

This black ink drawing is dominated by the figure of Princess Salome, who stands in rear quarter view and leans down to speak to a young, androgynous man. Salome wears a long white robe with a wide, swooping black band along the bottom. This black band is richly decorated with peacock feather designs. She wears peacock feathers in her hair, and an actual peacock glances toward her from the background of the scene. The young man wears a pleated tunic and has an elaborate bouffant hairdo.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1943.649
People
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley, British (Brighton, England 1872 - 1898 Menton, France)
Title
The Peacock Skirt
Other Titles
Series/Book Title: Salome
Classification
Drawings
Work Type
drawing
Date
1893
Culture
British
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/297895

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Black ink and graphite on white wove paper
Dimensions
23 x 16.8 cm (9 1/16 x 6 5/8 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
John Lane, London, by descent; to Annie Lane (his widow), sold [through thier sale, Anderson Galleries, New York, November 22, 1926, no. 46d]; to [Scott & Fowles, New York], sold; to Grenville L. Winthrop, New York, NY, May 6, 1927, bequest; to Fogg Art Museum, 1943.

State, Edition, Standard Reference Number

Standard Reference Number
Zatlin 866

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
Accession Year
1943
Object Number
1943.649
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • Aubrey Vincent Beardsley and Aymer Vallance, A Book of Fifty Drawings, Leonard Smithers (London, 1897), pg. 207, no. 21, repr.
  • Robert Ross and Aymer Vallance, Aubrey Beardsley, John Lane, The Bodley Head (London, England, 1909), no. 88.II
  • Joseph Pennell, Catalogue of an Exhibition of Original Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley, exh. cat., Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY, 1923), no. 25
  • Albert E. Gallatin, Aubrey Beardsley: Catalogue of Drawings and Bibliography, The Grolier Club (New York, NY, 1945), no. 880
  • Brian Reade, Aubrey Beardsley, Viking Press (New York, 1967), no. 277, repr.
  • Kenneth Clark, The Best of Aubrey Beardsley, J. Murray (London, 1979), no. 18, repr.
  • Daniel M. Mendelowitz and Duane A. Wakeham, Mendelowitz's Guide to Drawing, Holt, Rinehart & Winston (New York, NY, 1982)
  • Kristin A. Mortimer and William G. Klingelhofer, Harvard University Art Museums: A Guide to the Collections, Harvard University Art Museums and Abbeville Press (Cambridge and New York, 1986), no. 296, p. 253, repr.
  • Linda Gertner Zatlin, Aubrey Beardsley and Victorian Sexual Politics, The Clarendon Press (Oxford, England, 1990), p. 119, fig. 74
  • Chris Snodgrass, Aubrey Beardsley: Dandy of the Grotesque, Oxford University Press (NY) and Oxford University Press (UK) (New York, NY and Oxford, England, 1995), fig. 2-23, pp. 86-92
  • Magdalena Dabrowski and Leah Dickerman, Aleksandr Rodchenko, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY, 1998), p. 20, fig. 2
  • Linda Merrill, The Peacock Room: A Cultural Biography, Freer Gallery of Art / Yale University Press (New Haven, CT, 1998), pp. 311-312, repr. fig. 7.11
  • Mark Samuels Lasner, "The Pursuit of the Rare: Three Early Beardsley Collectors", Gazette of the Grolier Club (2000), no. 51, p. 17, note 34
  • Chikashi Kitazaki and Mina Oya, ed., Between Reality and Dreams: Nineteenth Century British and French Art from the Winthrop Collection of the Fogg Art Museum, exh. cat., National Museum of Western Art (Ueno, 2002), cat. no. 48-4, repr. (color)
  • Stephan Wolohojian, ed., A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press (U.S.) (New York, 2003), cat. no. 139, repr. (color)
  • Stephan Wolohojian, Ingres, Burne-Jones, Whistler, Renoir... La Collection Grenville L. Winthrop, exh. cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and Réunion des Musées Nationaux (Paris, France, 2003), no. 139, repr.
  • Daniel M. Mendelowitz, David L. Faber, and Duane A. Wakeham, A Guide to Drawing, Thomson Wadsworth (Belmont, CA, 2007), fig. 6-14, p. 108
  • Linda Gertner Zatlin, Aubrey Beardsley: A Catalogue Raisonné, Yale University Press (U.S.) (New Haven and London, 2016), vol. 1, p. 141, vol. 2, no. 866, pp. 10, 11, 19-23, 28, 47, 171, repr. p. 22
  • Myroslava M. Mudrak, "Incidental Modernism: Episodes of Symbolism in Modern Ukrainian Art", Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, 2019), Vol. 36, No. 3-4, pp. 342-343, fig. 21, ill. (color)

Exhibition History

  • Première salon de La Libre Esthétique, National Gallery, Brussels, 02/17/1894 - 03/15/1894
  • A Selection of Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley, Carfax and Co., London, 10/01/1904 - 10/31/1904
  • Aubrey Beardsley, 1872-1898, Galeries Shirley, Paris, 02/01/1907 - 02/28/1907
  • International Fine Arts Exhibition: British Section, British Fine Art Palace, Rome, 04/01/1911 - 10/31/1911
  • British Section of the International Exhibition of Book Industry and Graphic Arts: Illustration for Books, Internationale Ausstellung für Buchgewerbe und Graphic, Leipzig, 01/01/1914
  • An Exhibition of Original Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley, Brooklyn Museum, 12/19/1923 - 01/31/1924; Milwaukee Art Institute, 10/01/1924 - 10/30/1924; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, 11/01/1924 - 11/30/1924; Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, 11/29/1924 - 12/31/1924
  • Portrait, Prospect and Poetry: British Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Bequest, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 09/11/1993 - 11/07/1993
  • Between Reality and Dreams: Nineteenth Century British and French Art from the Winthrop Collection of the Fogg Art Museum, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 09/14/2002 - 12/08/2002
  • A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, Lyon, 03/15/2003 - 05/26/2003; National Gallery, London, 06/25/2003 - 09/14/2003; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 10/23/2003 - 01/25/2004
  • 32Q: 2100 19th Century, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/10/2015 - 11/16/2016

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be 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