Yellow Book

Yellow Book
Original painting
Collage and Acrylic on wooden panel, tray framed.
42 x 60 panel size
46 x 63.5 cm Frame size

The very brief history of yellow books:
In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the "yellow book" is understood by critics to be À rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans, a representative work of Parisian decadence that heavily influenced British aesthetes like Beardsley. Such books in Paris were wrapped in yellow paper to alert the reader to their lascivious content.

Beardsley had illustrated Oscar Wilde's Salome (1893) and when Wilde was arrested in 1895, the two men became unfortunately linked in the public consciousness. Wilde was carrying a copy of Aphrodite by Pierre Louys when he was arrested for indecency with men, a yellow book.