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OSCAR WILDE FAMOUS AND INFAMOUS THIS WEEK AT LIVEAUCTIONTALK.COM |
Oscar Wilde; cabinet card, signed photo; half-length portrait in a typical pose with flower in his lapel sold for $12,000. Photo courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries.
It’s the height of Oscar Wilde’s career in the spring of 1895. The place is London’s main courthouse. The man many call the cleverest person in the world is on trial for homosexuality.
A hush falls over the courtroom as Mr. Justice Wills reads the sentence.
“People who can do these things must be dead to all sense of shame…It is the worst case I ever tried,” he says.
Cheers break out in the courtroom as Wilde is sentenced to two years hard labor for “acts of gross indecency with men.”
He would leave prison two years later a broken man.
Wilde had kept the promise he made years before to his Oxford classmates.
“Somehow or other I’ll be famous, and if not famous, notorious,” he said. No one understood the power of promise better than Wilde.
He had achieved his goal of being famous and notorious.
Playwright. Novelist. Poet. Essayist. Editor. Raconteur. Fashion icon. Hedonist. Change agent. Oscar Wilde was a study in contrasts.
His fame was seemingly unstoppable in late Victorian England. What he couldn’t stop was England’s Victorian prudery
With Wilde’s glory came his fall. As an Irishman and homosexual he would always be an outcast among British society.
He married and fathered two children as a way to end to the rumors. But, it was its own kind of prison sentence. Wilde wasn’t happy playing the part and ultimately expressed his sexuality in the closet.
“Some said my life was a lie but I always knew it to be the truth; for like the truth it was rarely pure and never simple;” he said.
Wilde’s downfall showcased the double life homosexuals lead in Victorian England. His effeminate manners and flamboyant dress made him an easy target for critics.
He was ultimately released from prison on May 19, 1897.
“He came in talking, laughing, smoking a cigarette with waved hair and a flower in his buttonhole,’ one friend said. The same friend could see also see the toll Wilde’s imprisonment had taken in his face.
As soon as he could Wilde left the country he had spent his life in. He lived the few remaining years he had left in France. He had big plans to write a new play and complete an old one, but never mustered the energy.
Wilde did write one of his saddest poems entitled “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.” It was the story of a man who was executed for the murder of his wife. An execution Wilde witnessed.
His estranged wife died a year after he left prison. Broke and hungry Wilde spent his remaining time panhandling. With nothing left to lose, he was more open about his homosexuality than ever before.
He died Nov 30, 1900 at the age of 46.
On Feb. 11, Swann Galleries, New York, featured a signed photo of Oscar Wilde in its Signed Historical Photographs from the Jerome Shochet Collection sale. The cabinet card, half-length portrait in a typical pose with flower in his lapel sold for $12,000.
Here are some current values for other vintage, signed photos sold in the auction.
Historical Signed Photos
George Bernard Shaw; by Claude Harris; close-up portrait of bearded playwright; 8 inches by 5 ¼ inches image size; $4,080.
Robert Louis Stevenson; portrait of author leaning toward camera; 5 ¾ inches by 4 inches approximate, image size; $7,800.
Sigmund Freud; by Halberstadt; bust portrait; 12 inches by 9 inches approximate; $21,600.
Christopher (“Kit”) Carson; carte-de-visite; by Brady; dressed in civilian attire and seated; 3 ¼ by 2 ¼ inches approximate, image size; $33,600.
Abraham Lincoln; by Gardner; carte-de-visite; showing a seated president; 3 inches by 2 ¼ approximate, image size; $48,000.
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