A photograph of Oscar Wilde on his death bed has been sold for £279,800 (about €320,000) in an auction at Bonhams in London.
The photo had a guide price of £2,000 to £3,000. It was taken on the day Wilde died, November 30th, 1900.
The image was one of 156 lots sold during an auction on Wednesday afternoon. In total, the items fetched £1,689,780 (more than €1.9 million), Bonhams said.
In its description of the image, Bonhams noted that Wilde died at his room in the Hôtel d’Alsace, Paris, in the presence of Robert Ross, Reginald Turner, and hotel proprietor Jean Dupoirier, who laid Wilde out, clothed in a white nightshirt.
“Shortly after, Ross asked Gilbert Maurice to take this photograph,” a statement from Bonhams said.
Many of the items sold on Wednesday fetched a multiple of the guide prices listed in advance of the auction.
Two autographed manuscripts, a working draft and a copy of the sonnet titled The Grave of Shelley (from circa 1881), sold for £60,090. These had a guide price of £12,000 to £18,000.
A series of five letters, signed by Wilde, sent to J Graham Hill in 1888 and 1891 fetched £57,550, compared to a guide price of £10,000 to £15,000. In the letters, Wilde asked Hill to “come and have tea” and complimented his “very graceful and dainty” poetry.
Richard Ellmann on Oscar Wilde: “Now beyond the reach of scandal, his best writings validated by time, he comes before us still, a towering figure, laughing and weeping, with parables and paradoxes, so generous, so amusing, so right.” Photograph: Napoleon Sarony/Getty Images
In one of the letters, Wilde asked: “Are you still enamoured by Love and Poetry? I hope so. They are only two things in the world that remain.”
An autographed letter sent to Reggie Turner in August 1897 sold for £57,550, much higher than the £8,000 to £12,000 guide price.
A signed first edition of his drama Salomé sold for £48,640, up from a guide price of £15,000 to £25,000. The edition was inscribed “à mon cher ami (to my dear friend) Stuart Merrill”.
Merrill, who first met Wilde in London in 1890, was one of four French-speaking writers – alongside Adolphe Retté, Pierre Louÿs and Marcel Schwob – who Wilde charged with correcting his French, and making suggestions for revisions of the text of Salomé.