Ali Baba, Aubrey Beardsley Poster

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (21 August 1872 – 16 March 1898) was an English illustrator and author. Beardsley was the most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau era, renowned for his dark and perverse images and grotesque erotica, which were the main themes of his later work. Some of his drawings, inspired by Japanese shunga, featured enormous genitalia. His most famous erotica illustrations were on themes of history and mythology, including his illustrations for Aristophanes' Lysistrata and Wilde's Salomé. Beardsley later converted to Catholicism, and would subsequently beg his publisher to “destroy all copies of Lysistrata and bad drawings...by all that is holy all obscene drawings." His publisher, Leonard Smithers, ignored Beardsley’s wishes, and actually continued to sell reproductions as well as forgeries of Beardsley's work. This design dates from near the end of Beardsley's short life. It is his only drawing for a proposed book of Arabian Night's Tales, The Forty Thieves. The book was left unfinished at his death from tuberculosis in 1898. It is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.