IT IS SAID that celebrity is a combination of the celebrity producer, the celebrity figure and the public. And all three are evident in Napoleon Sarony's iconic portrait of Oscar Wilde—No. 18 of a set of 27—taken in Sarony's studio in New York at the beginning of Wilde's American tour in January 1882. Sarony created the portrait, posing Wilde, arranging his contours and approving his expression (intelligent and thoughtful), selecting the props (Wilde's dandified clothes and the book in his hand signifying the idea of the intellectual aesthete), and ordering the background (the rich Persian carpet on the floor adding to the impression of cultivated aestheticism, drawing here on the Orientalism that Wilde and other British aesthetes favored). Sarony's recognizable customized signature at the bottom of each image completes the suggestion that America's leading celebrity photographer was responsible for the remarkable image. But without Wilde's distinetive figure, face. and personal renown as a literary celebrity even at this relatively early stage of his literary life, the photograph would mean nothing to the audience. And without an audience to be impressed, amused, scandalized, and mesmerized, in turn, there would be no point in the photographic author or his (in)famous subject taking part in the project.

The project was initiated by the entertainment entrepreneur Richard D'Oyly Carte, ‘Oily’ Carte as he was sometimes known, for the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera Patience that Carte was producing, which was now commencing its American tour after a successful season in London. The show featured J.H. Ryley in the role of the poet-dandy Reginald Bunthorne and, concerned that the American public might not appreciate that such British dandies actually existed, Wilde was approached with the proposition that he tour alongside the musical to provide the necessary evidence, including sitting in the audience when the opera was performed, appropriately dressed and coiffured to reflect the character on stage—a clever play on things that worked to foster confusion as to just who was the copy and who was the original here.