The Rops Vignette

Not Everyone’s Kettle of Fish

Oscar Wilde’s symbolist play Salome is notable for its licentious artwork by Aubrey Beardsley. But Beardsley’s infamous illustrations appeared only when the English edition of the play was released in 1894.

When the original French Salomé had been published a year earlier, it contained no illustrations pertinent to the text. The only graphical representation in the French edition was the Rops Vignette, which had nothing to do with Wilde’s play, but it rivals Beardsley in its decadence.

So what is the Rops Vignette?

The vignette, or portrait design, appears on the title page of the 1893 French edition of Salomé and is an oval decoration depicting a mythical winged creature designed by Félicien Rops¹, a Belgian artist associated with eroticism and the symbolism of the Parisian Fin-de Siècle.

The device was not intended specifically for Wilde’s Salomé but was, and continued to be, the trademark of the Paris publisher Librairie de l’Art Indépendant, and it can be found on the title pages of their publications.

Because the Librairie’s books are not often reproduced online, the details of the design have remained unclear—and for this reason I have reproduced a higher definition below.

It shows a female creature wearing nothing save bangles, bracelets, and a diabolical expression. She is not quite a mermaid, because she has two fishtails separable by human legs presumably to further sexualize the form. The wings, wild hair, fangs, and cat’s eyes add to her indulgent posture for, as Anne Daniel has surmised, she “crouches over the scattered bones of her latest meal.”²

The reason for the Librairie de l’Art Indépendant’s choice of this trademark design is revealed by the Latin motto across the bottom of the frame—non hic piscis omnium—which perhaps can be taken to affirm that the decadent publisher’s output was “not everyone’s kettle of fish”.

Footnotes:

Félicien Victor Joseph Rops (1833-98). ↩︎
‘Lost in Translation: Oscar, Bosie, and Salome’. Anne Margaret Daniel. The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 68, No. 1-2 (Winter 2007), pp. 60-70. ↩︎