Tag: Photographs

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About Face

Oscar Wilde Blog5 Comments

The Howard Coster photographs of Alfred Douglas
At the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Speaking of Alfred Douglas, as we were in the latest article about Three Times Tried, he came onto my radar recently during the festive period.

You may recall a minor kerfuffle last year about various errors in a label to an Oscar Wilde photograph at the National Portrait Gallery in London, that I highlighted and which were subsequently corrected. So perhaps to atone for that censure, I decided to visit the gallery’s online shop for gift-giving ideas.

I alighted upon four interesting and lesser-known images of the noble Lord—part of a collection of photographs taken in the 1940s by the renowned celebrity photographer Howard Coster.1

There was a problem, however.

It’s pedantic, I know, but didn’t somebody once say: we should treat all the trivial things of life seriously.

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Double Take III

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THE HILLS ARE ALIKE

Another match in the Hills & Saunders photographs of Oscar Wilde.

You will recall the article Double Take II which featured the Hills & Saunders photographs of Oscar Wilde and his fellow students taken at Magdalen College. In that article I identified five “pairs” of photographs alluding to the fact there are TWO similar versions of each photograph taken a few seconds apart [see Repeating Back below].

There was, however, another photograph for which I concluded there was no known counterpart.

Now, thanks to the astute eye and memory of fellow Wilde scholar Rob Marland, we can reveal a match for that photograph as well.

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The Sarony Case

Oscar Wilde Blog3 Comments

Napoleon Sarony’s contribution to the photographs of Oscar Wilde was not primarily technical. Instead, he drew upon his artistic background to create the mise en scène of the image; and drew upon his buoyant personality to create the right mood for his sitter.

Meanwhile, it was his first and only operator, Benjamin J. Richardson who assisted with lighting and attending to the mechanical aspects of camera technique.

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Twenty-seven

Oscar Wilde Blog7 Comments
27N-1.jpg
Sarony photograph number 27 taken when Wilde was 27.

Oscar Wilde was 27 years of age when left England for America on board the S.S. Arizona. By the time he reached New York eight days later he was 26—this being the age he insisted upon in press interviews.1

A simple mistake for anyone to make who was awful at arithmetic or a victim to vanity; but it takes a declared genius to incorporate the error years later into his works, as we shall see.

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