Book cover

In the spring of 1892, Beardsley began a series of drawings in which the influence of Whistler and Japanese woodcuts was also apparent. By the summer of 1892, he produced such pen-and-ink drawings as Le D�bris d’un po�te (Victoria and Albert Museum, London), which marked the emergence of his mature style. Beardsley developed other styles, but that of this drawing is the key one and finds its fullest and most extraordinary expression in the 17 drawings he made for Oscar Wilde’s play Salome (London and New York, 1894).