Aubrey Vincent Beardsley, one of the leading artists of the aesthetic movement, shocked and delighted Victorian audiences with his sinuous black and white drawings of subjects ranging from decadent to grotesque. This caricature of Max Beerbohm, an essayist and caricaturist, is one of more than 100 illustrations that Beardsley drew for the London publisher John Dent’s Bon Mots series, first published in 1893.

The Bon Mots series coincided with Beardsley’s first major commission, also from Dent, to illustrate Le Morte Darthur, Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th-century version of the legends of King Arthur, for which he produced over 350 drawings between 1892 and 1894. His illustrations were reproduced using the relatively new and economical line block printing process in which drawings are transferred onto printing plates photographically. Though at first disappointed by the translation of his work from drawn to printed, Beardsley quickly adapted his style to suit the line block process, which successfully reproduced both the fine lines and large, flat areas of color, in his case black.