Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

Captioned simply 'Oscar' — one name sufficed — this chromolithograph by Carlo Pellegrini presents the thirty-year-old Wilde in full evening dress: tail coat, white waistcoat, corsage at the breast, gloves dangling from one hand, the other resting on his hip. The pose is self-possessed to the point of parody. Pellegrini exaggerates Wilde's broad, fleshy face and upward gaze, catching the studied theatricality that London society found simultaneously irresistible and absurd. By 1884 Wilde had already lectured America on Aestheticism; the single-word caption frames him as a cultural phenomenon requiring no further introduction — a figure famous, in part, for the performance of being famous.