Rare photograph of the British writer taken by Elliott & Fry studios at 55 Baker Street in London on March 19, 1881. Wilde appears in it, in three-quarter bust portrait, wearing a coat with a wide fur collar and a light-colored cravat.
4.500€
Oscar Wilde (1854.1900)
Photograph in business card format (cdv)
Vintage albumen print mounted on heavy card.
Size: 6.20 x 10.30 cm.
[London. March 1881.]
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Rare photograph of the British writer taken by Elliott & Fry studios at 55 Baker Street in London on March 19, 1881. Wilde appears in it, in three-quarter bust portrait, wearing a coat with a wide fur collar and a light-colored cravat.
Oscar Wilde, who was about to publish his collection of Poems with David Bogue, was perfectly aware of the need to shape his image as an aesthete and therefore knowingly lent himself to this photographic and advertising approach (a year later, in New York, the photographs taken by Napoleon Sarony would follow this Wildean strategy).
We know of different poses from this photographic session: other views (of which the National Gallery in London preserves the glass plates) show him standing with a cane and a top hat in his hand at the height of refinement and dandyism.
This photograph, a close-up bust shot, is extremely rare in the context of this series.
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The Elliott & Fry photography studio was founded in 1863 by Joseph John Elliott and Clarence Edmund Fry. The company was dissolved in 1963, after a century of operation.