Line block print of an illustration by Aubrey Beardsley, 'The Toilette of Salome' (second version), plate VIII for Oscar Wilde's 'Salome', 1893. Printed in Germany, 1907.

Black and white print depicting Salome, elegantly attired in a flowing dress and large hat, sitting in front of a Godwin dressing table complete with cosmetics and books, being coiffed by a bald pierrot of a barber, wearing ruffles. In the top left of the image is a slatted blind over a window which appears to be partially covered by curtains.

The original design for 'The Toilette of Salome' (E.433-1972) was deemed unacceptable by the publishers and so Beardsley was asked to provide another design which is the present image (E.434-1972). According to Stephen Calloway in his book, Aubrey Beardsley, London: V&A Publications, 1998, p. 77 and p. 80: 'In the event, Beardsley supplied in place of this drawing a second, yet more daringly abstracted toilet scene in which a bald pierrot of a barber, dressed in eighteenth-century ruffles, coifs a distinctly modern Salome, who sits, again, by a Godwin dressing-table. On a shelf he mischievously included a number [of] books, the revealing titles of which were quite legible; this little decadent library comprised Manon Lescaut , and Les Fêtes galantes , the slightly more risqué Golden Ass and two volumes yet more scandalous according to the mores of the day: Zola's Nana and one simply lettered Marquis de Sade . In the same way, after much discussion at the Bodley Head and a great many hurried consultations and letters and telegrams back and forth between Wilde and Lane, Beardsley eventually submitted to criticism in two further cases, and agreed to add extra designs to the set, including another wholly 'modern' image, The Black Cape . As he wrote to Ross, 'I suppose you've heard all about the Salomé row. I can tell you I had a warm time of it between Lane, Oscar and Co. For one week the numbers of telegraph and messenger boys who came to the door was simply scandalous ... I have withdrawn three of the illustrations and supplied their places with three new ones (simply beautiful and quite irrelevant)'.'

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