Savoy

The Savoy

The Savoy illustrations were created in two ways. The first being of pencil, a rough draft perhaps and the second out of india ink. The image shows both an empty, flat sky due to the absences of clouds and value in shade or color. Beardsley shows us in the Savoy image that you can still achieve dimension with the use of only two things, black ink and white negative space of the paper. The use of line he uses within each section of the image creates an almost three dimensional look as he lets only the slightest white of the paper show through the black streaks of ink.

The Savoy was created in France for the editor Arthur Symons; this magazine or letterpress was created shortly after Beardsley's creation of the Yellow Book. In the image of Savoy two figures are set in a garden; a woman who by looking at the face would depict a s

kinny figure due to the large mass of hair, but as you continue to look at the figure you see that she is a full figured woman or the viewer is given the impression due to the large dressing gown. The second image that meets the bottom hem of the woman's gown is a small figure that you would mistake as a cherub. However, the small figure is not a cherub, but a putto.* It is said that the woman in the illustration is past her adolescents and that this outfit she is wearing is concealing the need of desire, its real presence, and its inaccessibility, an emblem of the severe English nineteenth-century taboos on sex.*

As the viewer I can not see how this illustration can be construed as erotic. Looking at the details the full covered woman and the gloved hand with the whip; the putto, naked with a feathered instrument that can be possibly used for pleasure. Although the area surrounding these two figures is a lush garden it recalls when plays were performed in the park. Savoy may in fact be something of a sexual fantasy illustration; its background setting giving the idea that it is not but can also be looked over as a great illustration with naive attitudes.

*Fletcher, Ian. Aubrey Beardsley. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987.