{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O685611"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O685611/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2013GA5290/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2013GA5290/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"high","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2013GA5290","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2006AT4947","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":{"_iiif_pres":"https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O685611/manifest.json","_alt_iiif_pres":[]}},"record":{"systemNumber":"O685611","accessionNumber":"E.314-1972","objectType":"Drawing","titles":[{"title":"<i>Bon-Mots</i> Vignette","type":"popular title"}],"summaryDescription":"","physicalDescription":"Two figures stand next to a candle. One wears a black hat and hands a strange small creature to the other; he  has bandages around his head and wears a fur-trimmed coat.","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Beardsley","id":"A8134"},"association":{"text":"artist","id":"AAT25103"},"note":""}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[{"text":"paper","id":"x30308"},{"text":"pen and Indian ink","id":"x47322"}],"techniques":[{"text":"drawing","id":"x32498"}],"materialsAndTechniques":"Pen and ink","categories":[{"text":"Hats & headwear","id":"THES48943"},{"text":"Illustration","id":"THES48938"},{"text":"Men's clothes","id":"THES49043"}],"styles":[{"text":"aestheticism","id":"AAT18124"}],"collectionCode":{"text":"PDP","id":"THES48595"},"images":["2013GA5290","2006AT4947"],"imageResolution":"high","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"LVLE","id":"THES49657"},"free":"","case":"I","shelf":"50","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"drawing","id":""}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"No","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"England","id":"x28826"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"1893","earliest":"1893-01-01","latest":"1893-12-31"},"association":{"text":"published","id":"x30682"},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[],"creditLine":"Purchased with Art Fund support","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Height","value":"67","unit":"mm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"2015","earliest":"2015-01-01","latest":"2015-12-31"},"part":"sheet","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"110","unit":"mm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"2015","earliest":"2015-01-01","latest":"2015-12-31"},"part":"sheet","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"","marksAndInscriptions":[],"objectHistory":"Provenance: R. A. Harari ","historicalContext":"","briefDescription":"Drawing by Aubrey Beardsley, Vignette for p. 26 in <i>Bon-Mots</i> of Sydney Smith and R. Brinsley Sheridan, ed. by Walter Jerrold and published by J. M. Dent and Co., London 1893. ","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Linda Gertner Zatlin, Aubrey Beardsley : a catalogue raisonne. New Haven : Yale University Press, [2016] 2 volumes (xxxi, [1], 519, [1] pages; xi, [1], 547, [1] pages) : illustrations (some color) ; 31 cm. ISBN: 9780300111279\r\n\r\nThe entry is as follows:\r\n\r\n700\r\nTwo Figures by Candlelight holding a fetus\r\nAutumn 1892\r\nVictoria and Albert Museum, London (E.314-1972)\r\nPen, brush and Indian ink with traces of pencil on white wove paper secured to backing with slotted hinges; 2 3/16 x 4 3/8 inches (56 x 111 mm); signed.\r\n\r\nINSCRIPTIONS: Recto inscribed by artist in ink: [signature device on front of woman’s cloak]; Verso in black ink: E314-972\r\n\r\nPROVENANCE: J. M Dent; …; R. A. Harari, by descent to Michael Harari; bt. Victoria and Albert Museum in 1972 with the aid of a contribution from the National Art Collections Fund.  \r\n\r\nEXHIBITION: London 1966-8 (263); Tokyo 1983 (33); Munich 1984 (66);  Rome 1985 (4.I); London 1993 (95).\r\n\r\nLITERATURE: Vallance 1897 (p.206), 1909 (no. 65.IIi); Gallatin 1945 (nos. 645-771); Reade 1967 (pp. 22, 326, n.172); Fletcher 1987 (p.54); Zatlin 1990 (pp.111, 113); Samuels Lasner 1995 (no.18); Snodgrass 1995 (p. 178); Zatlin 1997 (pp. 209, 212, 215-6).\r\n\r\nREPRODUCED: ‘Bon-Mots of Sydney Smith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan’, edited by Walter Jerrold and published by J. M. Dent, in June 1893 (p. 26); Reade 1967 (plate 173); Wilson 1983 (figure 13).\r\n\r\nRepeated in two sizes in ‘Bon-Mots of Charles Lamb and Douglas Jerrold’, edited by Walter Jerrold and published by J. M. Dent, December 1893 (facing p. 122; on p. 151), and same size in ‘Bon-Mots of Samuel Foote and Theodore Hook’, edited by Walter Jerrold and published by J. M. Dent, March 1894 (p. 165). This drawing may be a parody of Beardsley’s ‘Merlin taketh the Child Arthur into his Keeping’ (no. 344 above) and Ford Madox Brown’s ‘Take Your Son, Sir’ (1857, Tate Collection, London; Fletcher 1987, p. 54). Or it may be a tribute to Michaelangelo’s ‘Doni Madonna’ (1506, Uffizi Gallery, Florence), judging from the fact that ‘the foetus is balanced between the adults’ hands, making it impossible to decide who is doing the handling’ (Zatlin 1990, pp. 111, 113). The figure of the fetus assuredly has some autobiographical content; it may reveal Beardsley’s feeling that he was a hideous monster, his desire never to have been born or a symbol of ‘his own despair in face of the future’ (Snodgrass 1995, p. 178; Zatlin 1997, pp. 215-6; Reade 1967, p. 22). As a child Beardsley must have seen a picture of a fetus in an anatomy book belonging to his surgeon grandfather Pitt, to whose library the young Aubrey had access; he may have seen an actual fetus in a travelling museum of oddities; or he may have recalled (from hearsay or actual view) the one his sister may have miscarried or aborted (Easton 1972, p. 179; Reade 1967, p. 326, n. 172). He included this figure in drawings throughout his career in all stages of life, and it represents the vulnerability of human existence; in this drawing the woman’s haggard expression recalls the travail of parturition or alludes to the pains of abortion, and in combination with her cloak, which is in the style of a Pierrot’s jacket, suggests futility. The man’s unkempt appearance, dirty long nails and bandaged head may subtly relay Aubrey’s idea of his sister’s abortionist. The fetus’s pointing finger possibly identifies the scruffy man as the father who ran away, who has syphilis or who passed on tuberculosis, as Vincent Beardsley may have done. The guttering candle - whose flame, symbolising the sexual passion that produced the fetus, leans towards the woman - and the abortionist’s instrument - that is at the same time a displaced phallus - are suggestive of scenes about which mothers did not speak to their daughters (Zatlin 1990, p.111, 113). For further comment on the fetus figure, see no. 243 above; for an additional example of the fetus-flame motif, see Enter Herodias (no. 870 below). For further comment on the figure of Pierrot, see no. 262 above. 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