Aubrey Beardsley
“The Wagnerites”
Yellow Book, London: John Lane; Boston: Copeland & Day, vol. 3 (October 1894), page 55
Beardsley’s vision of the audience for a production of Tristan und Isolde can be seen in this illustration from the Yellow Book of 1894. By this date it had become commonplace to suggest that followers of Wagner’s music were decadents, and this audience is mainly made up of unchaperoned, wealthy women, suggestive of that voguish figure of the 1890s, the femme fatale.
YALE CENTER FOR BRITISH ART, RARE BOOKS COLLECTION, PAUL MELLON BEQUEST,
ENGLISH LIFE REFERENCE