The Peacock Skirt

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley’s The Peacock Skirt is a black and white line block print from the Art Nouveau era. Beardsley pushed against the grain of culture and created a print that broke expectations and narratives. Inspired by the very controversial play, Salome, by Oscar Wilde, Beardsley carved a 16 piece set, taking scenes and themes from the play to create his own work. Oscar Wilde was a successful playwright but his themes of sexual exploration, innuendo, and his own homosexuality resulted in critique and eventually his arrest. Wilde’s play Salome and its embrace of overt sexuality was a perfect example of counter cultural art, drawing in critics of the Art Nouveau era. Beardsley was similarly driven to use hyper sexuality to create art that went against popular culture in the era. The Peacock Skirt displays an older woman, holding all of the power in the scene, aggressively seducing a young man. Beardsley’s inspirations did not stop at the play. In addition to the themes of sex in Salome, Beardsley was also drawn to the Ukiyo-e, the Japanese woodblock prints. In Japan, the themes of sexuality and “the naked” were growing in popularity and became an important part of Beardsley’s work. In The Peacock Skirt, the woman’s facial features, and her entire form, is distinctly similar to the Japanese print style. The final, and maybe most important source of stylistic inspiration; Whistler and Jeckyll’s The Peacock Room. It may be confusing how a room installment could be an inspiration for a woodblock print, but everything about the print is accentuated by the room. From Whistler’s oil painting on the wall, to the gold peacocks across from it, the room is the very heart of The Peacock Skirt. In study of his work, we see how Beardsley took in numerous points of inspiration, from style and form, to cultural narration, and created a genre defining moment with The Peacock Skirt.

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley, The Peacock Skirt, 1907, Process print from line block, Fogg Art Museum

The title piece. Crème de la crème. Beardsley’s print The Peacock Skirt is just part of a series inspired by Salome, a dramatic play by Oscar Wilde. Despite its conception in the midst of the Art Nouveau era, it broke barriers, challenged the cultural narrative, and ruined careers. Beardsley’s Salome series pushed the limits, not only artistically, but also socially, brazenly displaying the naked in his work, with no fear of vulgarity or shame. The Peacock Skirt’s inspiration doesn’t stop at Salome; Beardsley also brought in style from the era’s Japanese woodblock prints and The Peacock Room by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Thomas Jeckyll.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Thomas Jeckyll, The Peacock Room, 1877, Oil paint and gold leaf on canvas, leather, and wood, Freer

Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The Peacock Room was designed as a dining room in Kensington, London. The room features a beautiful blue-green and gold leaf palette. Similar to how Beardsley took inspiration from Japanese woodblock prints, the room is a notable example of the Anglo-Japanese style, a result of the growing appreciation of Japanese design and culture. The room contains two notable aspects. The painting, The Princess from the Land of Porcelain, and two large golden peacocks on the opposite wall.

 

James McNeill Whistler, Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain, 1865, Oil on Canvas, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The center piece oil painting in The Peacock Room. The Peacock Room is it’s own curation in a way, containing a painting that furthers it’s own exploration of the Anglo-Japanese style. The painting blends the Art Nouveau era with the ever growing popular Anglo-Japanese. The painting contains numerous references to Japanese art, design, and culture. The subject wears a kimono, holds a hand fan, and stands in front of a Japanese folding screen.

Chōbunsai Eishi, Genji in Exile at Suma, 1791, Woodblock print, H. O. Havemeyer Collection

One of the most important parts of Beardsley’s inspiration, the Japanese woodblock prints, however, he didn’t only use the same medium and technique of prints. He also mimicked the Japanese work by breaking French cultural narrative. In this work, Genji in Exile at Suma, we see three women playing with a cat on the ground. This work is based on a famous play in Japan, one that would be recognized by any high-class Japanese viewer. The difference is, there should be men standing in place of the women. Beardsley breaks expectation in a similar way, as in The Peacock Skirt, it portrays a woman sexually overpowering a younger man.

Kitagawa Utamaro, Picture of the Upper Class, 1794-95, Woodblock print; ink and color on paper, Honolulu Museum of Art

The Picture of the Upper Class woodblock print is another perfect example of how Beardsley was inspired. The Japanese print by Utamaro features two high class women wearing kimono’s. Looking at how the kimono flows, we see similarities to the peacock skirt the woman wears in The Peacock Skirt. We also see one character standing over the other, hinting at a power structure being represented in the print, as it is in The Peacock Skirt.