Wilde on Us. Something To "Live Up" To in America (published in "Harper's Bazar," June 10, 1882)

Thomas Nast

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is a proof of a wood engraving published in Harper's Bazar. Oscar Wilde dressed in a velvet suit with knee breeches, points to work boots and a straw hat lettered "The Picturesque Miners in the Rocky Mountains." His pockets are stuffed with moneybags, and sunflowers grow from a column capital behind. More sunflowers and a lily grows from another pair of boots. A hat resting on a cudgel is labeled "For Sun & Rain." Graffiti on the wall behind depicts men fighting, a bottle of liquor, and roosters, with buildings labeled "Mudville." Nast depicts Wilde is in his familiar lecturing garb surrounded by lilies and sunflowers and with money bulging from his pockets. During a lecture tour of America, Wilde visited Leadville, Colorado on April 13, 1882 and there spoke to silver miners.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art