Beardsley, with his infamous reputation, tragic life and instantly recognisable style, is one of the paradigmatic figures of the Modern Age, who worked hard to fashion his persona. Born in Brighton in 1872 of lower-class parents and diagnosed a consumptive at the age of seven, Beardsley quickly established himself as a precocious talent. His erotic, decadent illustrations for Oscar Wilde's Salome set the tone of his style: by turn shocking, facetious and cruel. Elongated and androgynous himself, he was readily confused with his own degenerate pictures. Sex suffuses his art and accounts for the mixture of fascination and horror with which his pictures were viewed by contemporaries.