Black ink drawing depicts a robed woman grasping a severed head.
Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
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Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College

Black and white line drawing depicting a robed woman (Salome), wearing a long black robe with curled hair, in front of a high circular table on which lies the severed and bloody head of a man (John the Baptist). Salome grasps some of his hair in her right hand so his head is tilted back and gazes down upon it. There is a pair of slippers in the lower right hand corner of the image.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1943.652
People
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley, British (Brighton, England 1872 - 1898 Menton, France)
Title
The Dancer's Reward
Other Titles
Series/Book Title: Salome
Classification
Drawings
Work Type
drawing
Date
1893
Culture
British
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/297896

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Black ink and graphite on white wove paper
Dimensions
23 x 16.5 cm (9 1/16 x 6 1/2 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • Signed: l.l: decorated version of the Japanese monogram

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
John Lane, London; his widow, Annie Lane; their sale, Anderson Galleries, New York, November 22, 1926, no. 46i; purchased at that sale by Scott and Fowles, New York; acquired from them by Grenville L. Winthrop, November 23, 1926 ($1,100); his bequest to the Fogg Art Museum, 1943.

State, Edition, Standard Reference Number

Standard Reference Number
Zatlin 873

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
Accession Year
1943
Object Number
1943.652
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

THIS WORK MAY NOT BE LENT BY THE TERMS OF ITS ACQUISITION TO THE HARVARD ART MUSEUMS.

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Publication History

  • Aubrey Vincent Beardsley and Aymer Vallance, A Book of Fifty Drawings, Leonard Smithers (London, 1897), pg. 207, no. 22, repr.
  • Aubrey Vincent Beardsley and Henry Currie Marillier, The Early Work of Aubrey Beardsley, John Lane (London, 1899), no. 36, repr.
  • Joseph Pennell, Catalogue of an Exhibition of Original Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley, exh. cat., Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY, 1923), no. 30
  • Blake to Beardsley: A Century of English Illustrators, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, 1944), no. 3
  • Albert E. Gallatin, Aubrey Beardsley: Catalogue of Drawings and Bibliography, The Grolier Club (New York, NY, 1945), no. 887
  • Brian Reade, Aubrey Beardsley, Viking Press (New York, 1967), no. 282, repr.
  • Dorothy W. Gillerman, ed., Grenville L. Winthrop: Retrospective for a Collector, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, 1969), p. 244
  • Donald Thomas, The Marquis de Sade, New York Graphic Society (Boston, MA, 1976), repr. p. 177
  • Kenneth Clark, The Best of Aubrey Beardsley, J. Murray (London, 1979), no. 22, repr.
  • A.M. Hammacher, Phantoms of the Imagination: Fantasy in Art and Literature from Blake to Dali, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (New York, NY, 1981), fig. 95, p. 112
  • Simon Wilson, Beardsley (revised edition), Phaidon Books (Oxford, 1983), no. 21, repr.
  • Linda Gertner Zatlin, Aubrey Beardsley and Victorian Sexual Politics, The Clarendon Press (Oxford, England, 1990), p. 94, fig. 50, repr.
  • Jeffrey Wallen, "Illustrating Salome: Perverting the Text?", Word and Image (April 1992 - June 1992), vol. 8, no. 2, repr. fig. 7
  • 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. 48-8, 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. 140, repr. (color)
  • Christopher Riopelle, Harvard's Winthrop Collection: Nineteenth-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, exh. cat., National Gallery Company Limited (London, 2003), p. 23, cat. 10, ill.
  • 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. 140, repr.
  • Steven Ledbetter, "Richard Strauss: 'Salome,' Opera in one act, Opus 54", Boston Symphony Orchestra (Boston, 2014), pp. 29-37, repr. p. 31
  • Linda Gertner Zatlin, Aubrey Beardsley: A Catalogue Raisonné, Yale University Press (U.S.) (New Haven and London, 2016), vol. 2, no. 873, pp. 11, 18, 21, 38-40, 42, 110, repr. p. 39, detail repr. p. 2
  • Carey Dunne, Flowers of Evil and the Macabre Literary Imagination of Symbolism, Hyperalleric (July 4, 2016), [e-journal], http://hyperallergic.com/305877/flowers-of-evil-and-the-macabre-literary-imagination-of-symbolism/, accessed January 9, 2017
  • Franklin Einspruch, Fuse Visual Art Review: A Pair of Drawing Shows at the Harvard Art Museums, The Arts Fuse ([e-journal], June 9, 2016), http://artsfuse.org/146319/fuse-visual-arts-review-a-pair-of-drawing-shows-at-the-harvard-art-museums/, accessed June 9, 2016

Exhibition History

  • Première salon de La Libre Esthétique, National Gallery, Brussels, 02/17/1894 - 03/15/1894
  • Secession VIII Kunstausstellung: Zeichnende Kunst, [Unknown venue, Berlin], 12/01/1903 - 01/31/1904
  • 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
  • Exhibition of Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley, Baillie Gallery, London, 08/01/1909 - 09/30/1909
  • 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
  • Blake to Beardsley: A Century of English Illustrators, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 06/01/1944 - 06/30/1944
  • The Age of Romanticism, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, 03/15/1986 - 05/18/1986
  • 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
  • Flowers of Evil: Symbolist Drawings, 1870–1910, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 05/21/2016 - 08/14/2016

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