The Peacock Skirt

Wilde wrote to Beardsley, recognising him as a "kindred spirit" and enclosing a copy of Salome, and commissioned him to illustrate the first edition of the play, which was published in English in 1894.

It shows a rear quarter view of a woman, Salome, wearing a long robe decorated with stylised peacock feather pattern.

Salome is turned to the right, to converse with a second figure, probably the "Young Syrian" mentioned in the text of the play, with an androgynous face but masculine hairy knees, elaborate hairstyle and pleated tunic.

The drawing was influenced by James McNeill Whistler's decorations in his 1876–77 Peacock Room, designed for Frederick Leyland's house at 49 Prince's Gate, but now in the Freer Gallery of Art.

Prints of Beardsley's drawings were included in the English edition of Salome, published in 1894 by Elkin Mathews and John Lane of The Bodley Head in London and by Copeland and Day in Boston, Massachusetts, reproduced using a set of wood engravings made by Carl Hentschel.