The Hills & Saunders Photographs
of Oscar Wilde and Friends
The current exhibition of Oscar Wilde at Magdalen College prompts me to extend an idea begun last year in an article entitled Double Take—in which I featured two similar photographs by Hills & Saunders of Oscar Wilde and his fellow students at Magdalen.
That article highlighted only one of the series; now we take a look at the other known examples.
Hills & Saunders was one of the leading Victorian photographic firms specializing in portraits of university students, members of the military, and the royal family.
You have probably seen some the college images of Wilde taken by Hills & Saunders—they are typically recognizable as the ones in which he is wearing a checked suit, and is accessorized with a bowler hat and cane.
CHECK MATES
Below are five “pairs” of photographs—which alludes to the fact there are TWO similar versions of each photograph taken a few seconds apart [see Repeating Back below].
This correspondence is worth stressing because the pairs are rarely, if ever, shown together. Consequently, if you have seen both photographs on separate occasions, you might have assumed you had been looking at only one. But when viewed together the differences become evident: some details are obvious but others are more subtle.
So it would be prudent when showcasing the Hills & Saunders photographs to present them side-by-side. There are three group photographs taken with three different sets of friends, and two individual poses.
A Note About Dates
Various sources give conflicting dates for most of these photographs. I have chosen the one that appears to be the most reliable.
In this respect it is worth noting that Wilde appears to be wearing three different check suits: one with two side pockets; one with a single breast pocket; and one with a larger patch pocket. Also, in some photographs Wilde’s collar is turned down, and in others it is turned up.
In all cases, click to enlarge.
Oscar with WO Goldschmidt (back), JEC Bodley (left), RJE Childers (front), and Willie Wilde (right).
[February 1, 1875.]1
L-R: AF Peyton, CH Tindal, Wilde, CH Lindon, TT Peyton.
[March 13, 1875]2
Now revealing the distinctive center parting.
[June, 1875]3
L-R: Reginald “Kitten” Harding, William “Bouncer” Ward, and Oscar.
[March 12, 1876]4
Despite the captioned date, Wilde is wearing the March 1875 suit with collar turned up.
[April 3, 1876]5
The two photographs below, plus one other reproduced in miniature in The Wilde Album (p. 35) are examples by Hills & Saunders for which there is no known counterpart.
Repeating Back
As I pointed out in my studies of the Sarony photographs, it was a fairly common practice in Oscar’s day to take successive exposures of similar poses using a repeating back camera. Many of the Sarony series were taken this way in pairs. To enable this, the camera had a draw-slide attachment which exposed the two halves of a single plate.
The Two Number Nines
For example, take these two nearly identical images of Oscar: in one Wilde is holding his book of Poems (1881/82) and in the other he is not. (Incidentally, BOTH of these are given the Sarony photograph number 9—which I’ve numbered 9A and 9B. For more on this see the article Twenty-Seven. and this page on the web site)
Footnotes:
- The Clark (William Andrews) Memorial Library has Millard’s copy of this photograph with the date “1st February 1875.” in Wilde’s hand on the verso. ↩︎
- So dated by Richard Ellmann in Oscar Wilde at Oxford, [from his lecture 1983 ] (Washington DC: Library of Congress, 1984). ↩︎
- So dated in Merlin Holland: The Wilde Album (p, 44). ↩︎
- So dated by Richard Ellmann in Oscar Wilde at Oxford, [from his lecture 1983 ] (Washington DC: Library of Congress, 1984). ↩︎
- So captioned by Robert H. Sherard in The Real Oscar Wilde (London: T. Werner Laurie, 1915). ↩︎
- So noted in Merlin Holland: The Wilde Album (p, 48). ↩︎
- Person left identified in Merlin Holland: The Wilde Album (p, 35) as Arnold Fitzgerald but later corrected to Rowland Childers by the author on this blog. See comments section on this page. ↩︎
Interesting, John. I was at the Bodleian a couple of weeks ago and in ‘Walpole d. 18’ I found a collection of the college photos, some of which I had never seen before. One was, I believe, a second shot of Wilde with Childers in which Wilde is smiling. Because smiling pictures are so rare I was surprised it had not (to my knowledge) been published before. Most were dated on the back. Next time I am there I will take notes.
I was surprised that the Magdalen photographs were not in the Magdalen exhibition. Go figure. Be interesting to know what they are. Coincidentally I’m going to publish next a photograph of Wilde that I do not think has appeared online before—it’s in The Wildean, No. 33. Is this the one you’re referring to?
I see which one you mean, on p3. Yes, he does appear to be smiling in that one. The one I saw was posed and framed like the one with Childers above and my memory is that it was with Childers and not another friend. The smile was very clear and pronounced. As I say, this is why I was surprised I had not seen it before.
It is intriguing to see how the art of photography has not evolved very much in the past 150 years since all the tricks of today’s digital trade were being put to effective use even then such as changing the context of a picture slightly – which, if, as you write, means that once isolated you believe to have seen only one photograph, not two different ones. Obviously, those were times when to smile must have been something that you did not propagate as much as you would do nowadays. This might be the reason why the photo with Wilde smiling has not been known before.
Jörg W. Rademacher, Leer, East Friesia, Germany