Oscar Wilde was a flamboyant Irish author and playwright, who was imprisoned in England for two years (May 1895 to May 1897) for “gross indecency” when his homosexual activity was publicized. This is one of several photographs of Oscar Wilde taken by the famous photographer Napoleon Sarony in 1882 when Wilde visited New York. Another image from the same session sparked a lawsuit the following year that rose all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and confirmed the right of photographers to copyright their images. A lithographer used the image of Wilde to make a lithograph, claiming that the picture of Wilde was not a creative work but due to a mere mechanical process. Sarony’s lawyers prevailed, and established a precedent still cited to this day when photographic copyright issues arise.

Sarony was the premiere celebrity photographer in New York in the 1870s and 1880s. Born in Canada about 1821, he was trained as a lithographer, but learned the daguerreotype process in the late 1850s. After his wife died in 1858 he took his children to Europe, and studied art. His brother was running a successful photography business in England, and Napoleon decided to go into that business as well. He returned to New York in 1865 and opened a photographic studio. Napoleon Sarony died November 9th 1896 in New York City.