Wilde must have understood the power of visual imagery, and soon after his New York lecture (and at Morse’s urging), sat for 28 portrait sittings with Napoleon Sarony, the city’s leading commercial photographer. [15] Sarony cleverly arranged for an exclusive contract that made him the only photographer permitted to take Wilde’s likeness, and it proved profitable — Wilde told a reporter that the demand for his portraits far exceeded the supply. [16] Wilde, Morse, and Sarony all astutely perceived that the dissemination of Wilde’s likeness would increase his celebrity, and these images, which were sold throughout his tour, are the images that now provide the clearest impressions of the young Oscar Wilde.
Many other printed images were created in Wilde’s wake, images generated not by Wilde but by businesses eager to piggyback on his growing fame by associating themselves with his views on home decor. The new printing technique of chromolithography created colorful images that were cheap to print; it was used extensively to disseminate all sorts of ads, including those associated with Wilde. Manufacturers of household items such as wallpaper, paint, and thread created thousands of business cards depicting Wilde in a variety of poses and postures, typically with sunflowers and lilies, the flowers that became his hallmark — he became known as “The Sunflower Apostle.” Publishers of sheet music, who provided much of the home entertainment of the time, put Wilde on their covers in a variety of guises in order to sell popular songs; some of the tunes were inspired by Wilde himself.
While most of the printed messages are obvious in their attempts at broad humor and satire, many mocked Wilde in ways that today seem unthinkable, especially those that began to emerge portraying him as a black man. One South Carolina photographer made a startling, coded image that warrants our attention, as we shall see. Cryptic in nature, only recently has it been decoded as anti-Wilde. All of these images, whether lithographic or photographic, share similar iconographies that reveal an attitude of derision, a mindset of racism and an obliviousness to prejudice — and they all align with the visual culture of the late 19th century that included casually cruel images of black people. How Oscar Wilde became enmeshed in this imagery reveals a great deal about America’s deep-seated unease with racial, sexual, and cultural differences.
