Published when the artist was just 22 years old, Beardlsey’s illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s English edition of Salomé cemented the artist’s association with the fin-de-siècle decadent style of pictorial illustration. Borrowing from Japanese Ugiyo-e prints, Beardsley’s black and white images, like The Peacock Skirt and The Black Cape, are constructed with a network of calligraphic line and pattern that denies depth of field or shadow.

Drawn from a biblical narrative (the death of John the Baptist), Wilde’s notorious play fell under scrutiny for centering on the seductive power of Salomé, the femme-fatale protagonist. Likewise Beardsley’s illustrations were scrutinized for “inappropriate” content. While unabashedly erotic pictorial elements and ornament were expunged from the first edition — Beardsley’s was forced to redraw the first design for Toilette of Salome, and the exposed genitals of the male page in Enter Herodias were covered with a fig leaf for publication — less overt, but equally charged imagery hidden in and amongst the arabesques and ornaments escaped the anxious eye of Lane. Often witty, Beardlsey incorporated caricatures of Wilde in designs for The Woman in the Moon and Enter Herodias, where the author’s face fills in for the moon and appears as a grotesque figure who introduces Herodias. Although Wilde seems to have tolerated these caricatures, he faulted Beardlsey’s designs for having little to do with his text.

The seventeen line-block illustrations for Salomé in the Bell Gallery were issued in 1922 as a set that included several suppressed designs from the first edition.  The group entered the Bell Gallery collection as an anonymous gift. The Bell Gallery also owns a color lithograph with a design from the Keynote Series, given by Stephen Scher.