The Famous photograph of Oscar Wilde by Canadian photographer, Napoleon Sarony. Reproduced in a silver print by French photographer, Pierre Molinier and annotated “5T.D 75” on the back. Accompanied by the original negative mounted by him under black passe-partout. Undated.

A unique print by Molinier.

Pierre Molinier (1900-1976) was a French Surrealist painter and photographer best known for his erotic sadomasochistic imagery. Born on April 13, 1900 in Agen, France, Molinier began his artistic practice as a landscape painter, working in the Fauve and Impressionist styles. Following World War II, he began to explore the eroticism and fetishistic influences that would characterize his later work.

Napoleon Sarony (1821-1896), an acknowledged master of celebrity photographs, succeeded Mathew Brady as the best-known portrait photographer in New York. When the original photograph was taken in January 1882, Oscar Wilde had not yet written “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (1891) and the plays that would make him famous in the next decade. Twenty-seven years old, he had to his credit only an unproduced melodrama, “Vera,” and a controversial book of verse. He had, however, created a position for himself in London society as a wit and a dandy, promoting the cause of the English aesthetic movement through his dazzling conversation.