Original portrait photograph by Napoleon Sarony, large format albumen cabinet card, SIGNED BY WILDE (“Oscar Wilde June ’82 New York”), quarter length, turned to the left and half looking back towards but not at the camera, wearing his astrakhan coat. 7 1⁄4” x 12 3⁄4”, archivally matted and set in a fine hand-carved original Aesthetic Movement frame under UV plexi.  The image has had some cleaning and restoration work to the surface, the edges and the bottom corners. There is a surface crack through the “e” of June and light damage to the surface just above the “c” in Oscar.  Wilde is very scarce in signed photographs, and ones of this size are particularly rare. Reference: Merlin Holland, The Wilde Album, 1997 (number 22 in Holland's sequence); Richard Ellman, Oscar Wilde, 1987.

Wilde, who was eager to make an international reputation, first came to America on a lecture tour arranged by the English impresario, Richard d'Oyly Carte (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame), arriving on the SS Arizona on January 3rd, 1882, this being the date of his famous quip to the NY Customs House officer that he had "nothing to declare except my genius." On a grueling schedule, Wilde lectured to Americans on aestheticism in a new town every few days and though the tour was originally planned to last four months, it was continued for over a year. In preparation for this tour, he bought himself some suitably aesthetic outfits, including a long, heavy, fur-lined green overcoat (shown in this photograph). He became very attached to this coat, writing later that "it was all over America with me ... it knows me perfectly," and he wore it when he set sail for New York on Christmas Eve, 1881, without a word of his lectures written.