Oscar Wilde
1 portrait
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Oscar Wilde
by Napoleon Sarony
albumen panel card, 1882
12 in. x 7 1/4 in. (305 mm x 184 mm)
Purchased, 1976
Primary Collection
NPG P25
Artistback to top
- Napoleon Sarony (1821-1896), Photographer. Artist or producer associated with 57 portraits.
Linked publicationsback to top
- 100 Photographs, 2018, p. 34 Read entry
Dublin-born dramatist, writer and wit Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was renowned as an aesthete from an early age. His unconventional behaviour, witty and paradoxical remarks and dandified pose brought him notoriety. In 1882 Wilde embarked on a lecture tour of North America. Shortly after his arrival in New York, he posed for a series of extravagant portraits by Napoleon Sarony (1821-96), including this one. Later, Wilde’s period of greatest creativity, including the publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and a succession of stage comedies culminating in The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was cut short by two years’ imprisonment with hard labour as a result of his then-illegal love affair with Lord Alfred Douglas.
- 100 Photographs, 2018, p. 35 Read entry
Dublin-born dramatist, writer and wit Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was renowned as an aesthete from an early age. His unconventional behaviour, witty and paradoxical remarks and dandified pose brought him notoriety. In 1882 Wilde embarked on a lecture tour of North America. Shortly after his arrival in New York, he posed for a series of extravagant portraits by Napoleon Sarony (1821-96), including this one. Later, Wilde’s period of greatest creativity, including the publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and a succession of stage comedies culminating in The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was cut short by two years’ imprisonment with hard labour as a result of his then-illegal love affair with Lord Alfred Douglas.
- 100 Writers, p. 72
- Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 661
- Toksvig, Sandi; Dyer, Richard, Gay Icons, 2009 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 2 July - 18 October 2009), p. 12
Linked displays and exhibitionsback to top
- Setting the Scene: Staging and Backdrops in Studio Photographs (22 March 2016 - 4 December 2016)
Events of 1882back to top
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