Portrait of Himself, in The Yellow Book: An Illustrated Quarterly. Volume III, October 1894

Aubrey Beardsley

Portrait of Himself, in The Yellow Book: An Illustrated Quarterly. Volume III, October 1894

London:

Elkin Mathews and John Lane,

1894.

Richard Le Gallienne’s copy.

There were many ways to understand Beardsley’s Yellow Book self-portrait and even more ways to interpret the accompanying text. Given the disparity between the enormous bed and Beardsley’s tiny head, he appeared to be presenting himself as childlike. But the bedcurtains made that head seem to peek out from inside a woman’s skirt, while the hiding of hands beneath the covers raised the possibility of some very adult activity occurring there. The words in the upper left corner, which translate as “By the twin gods, not all the monsters are in Africa,” might have been a racist statement supporting xenophobic stereotypes; yet it also could have been a challenge to racist assumptions, suggesting that white English people like Beardsley were, on the contrary, the true “monsters.” Regardless of how viewers approached this image, it offered a vision of “Himself” that was likely to raise questions and possibly provoke outrage.

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