Bathyllus in the Swan Dance

Aubrey Beardsley's distinctive black and white drawings for Oscar Wilde's Salomé, published in 1894, brought him an extraordinary notoriety whilst still in his early twenties. His work for the periodical The Yellow Book confirmed his position as the most innovative illustrator of the day, but as a result of the hostile moralistic outcry that followed the arrest and trial of Oscar Wilde in early 1895, John Lane and other publishers panicked and dropped Beardsley. Thereafter, almost the only publisher who would use his drawings was Leonard Smithers. Smithers was a brilliant but shady character who operated on the fringes of the rare book trade, issuing small, clandestine editions of risqué books with the boast: 'I will publish the things the others are afraid to touch'. Smithers encouraged Beardsley's already growing interest in French, Latin and Greek texts of this kind and commissioned drawings to illustrate Aristophanes's famously bawdy satirical play Lysistrata and the Satires of the late Roman poet Juvenal.

Beardsley made a number of drawings to illustrate Juvenal's Sixth Satire, 'Against Woman'. Two of these represent Bathyllus, a character referred to by the author only in passing. Bathyllus was an effeminate dancer, much admired by decadent Roman audiences for his lewd and suggestive performances. In this first design, Beardsley makes specific reference to the text in which Bathyllus is described as acting the part of Leda, a maiden seduced by Zeus in the form of a swan in Greek myth. In this relatively decorous image the dancer makes an overtly camp gesture of modesty and rejection of the swan's advances.