Oscar Wilde at Work

Aubrey Beardsley

Oscar Wilde at Work

[London:

Stuart Mason,

June 1914].

Photomechanical engraving on Japan vellum.

Robert, a.k.a. “Robbie,” Ross (1869­–1918)—Oscar Wilde’s lover and later literary executor, and a close friend of Beardsley’s—linked the two great dandies and decadents. Of course, dandies and decadents were not supposed to be hard workers, but Beardsley was among history’s most industrious artists, producing what was calculated as over a thousand finished drawings from 1892 until shortly before his death in 1898. This caricature, which mocks Wilde’s working methods, belonged to Ross. Beardsley imagines Wilde writing Salome in French by relying on dictionaries and textbooks, while consulting his family Bible for Salome’s story. The presence, moreover, of Swinburne’s poems suggests that Beardsley found Wilde’s style derivative, if not imitative. Linda Zatlin’s Beardsley catalogue raisonné notes that the French quotation changes a line from Wilde’s play, where one character tells another not to look at her (Salome), so that the command is not to look at him (Wilde).

From the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press