Lysistrata shielding her Coynte (Illustration for the comedy Lysistrata by Aristophanes)

Beardsley’s striking style of drawing shaped the look of Art Nouveau. It is based on a flattened perspective of stylised form, the contrast of a fine line with the surface area and the harmony between black and white. Up to 1895, before the beginning of the scandal and the arrest of his friend Oscar Wilde, his status was that of a popular illustrator. But social morality and condemnation closed his access to publication, which was then made use of by the problematical Publisher L. Smithers who began to publish his work. In 1896 he successfully published his illustrations to the comedy Lysistrata by the classical dramatist Aristophanes. This is an anti-war and obscene tale, the development of which is influenced by the main heroine. Beardsley drew his themes from the tradition of classical drama and linked it in an original manner with his symbolism in delicate drawings to produce shameless figural scenes.