{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O685620"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O685620/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2013GA4093/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2013GA4093/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"high","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2013GA4093","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2006AT8037","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2018LG6410","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":{"_iiif_pres":"https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O685620/manifest.json","_alt_iiif_pres":[]}},"record":{"systemNumber":"O685620","accessionNumber":"E.298-1972","objectType":"Drawing","titles":[{"title":"Two Athenian Women in Distress","type":"assigned by artist"},{"title":"Lysistrata","type":"series title"}],"summaryDescription":"Aubrey Beardsley's distinctive black and white drawings for Oscar Wilde's <i>Salomé</i>, published in 1894, brought him an extraordinary notoriety whilst still in his early twenties. His work for the periodical <i>The Yellow Book</i> 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 the Satires of the late Roman poet Juvenal and, most famously, Aristophanes's bawdy satirical play <i>Lysistrata</i>.\r\n\r\nThe seemingly obscure and bizarre iconography of the design is in fact explained by reference to Aristophanes' text which describes the comic attempts of the Athenian women to defend the city. 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The original was destroyed in a fire, and a copy was commisioned by Leonard Smithers.\r\n\r\nProvenance: Leonard Smithers; Herbert Pollitt; R. A. Harari ","historicalContext":"","briefDescription":"Drawing by an anonymous copyist, after Aubrey Beardsley,'Two Athenian Women in Distress', illustration to 'Lysistrata' by Aristophanes, published by Leonard Smithers, London 1896 (facing page 34), pen and ink on paper, early 20th century.","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"Calloway, Stephen. <u>Aubrey Beardsley</u>. London: V & A Publications, 1998. 224pp, illus. 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