Aubrey Beardsley died of tuberculosis at twenty-five, and in about six years of work he changed illustration forever. The Peacock Skirt comes from his drawings for the English edition of Oscar Wilde's play Salome. Black ink, white paper, nothing else — and a peacock train that unfurls into swirling, hypnotic pattern.

His style took Japanese prints, medieval decoration and a dandy's taste for the strange, and pared them down to curves and voids. Victorian critics found his work shocking: it was elegant, sensual and often deliberately grotesque.

Seventy years later, the 1960s found him. A major Beardsley exhibition at London's Victoria and Albert Museum in 1966 drew huge crowds, and his flowing lines and art nouveau curves fed straight into the psychedelic posters and album art of the next few years.

If you have ever seen a 1967 concert poster with lettering that melts into ornament, you have seen Beardsley's great-grandchildren.