The Story Behind The Last Photograph of Oscar Wilde on His Death Bed
The last photograph of Oscar Wilde, taken on his death bed, was sold for $375,000 at auction. Captured by Maurice Gilbert shortly after Wilde's death in 1900, the image is notable for its historical significance despite the poor lighting conditions. Only a few prints of this final portrait are believed to exist, making it a remarkable piece of literary history.
- ▪The photograph was taken on November 30, 1900, just hours after Wilde passed away.
- ▪Maurice Gilbert, a French marine infantryman, took the photograph using a borrowed camera and magnesium flashlight.
- ▪Wilde's career was marred by his conviction for 'gross indecency' in 1895, leading to his exile in Europe.
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| Original publisher | PetaPixel |
| Canonical URL | https://petapixel.com/2026/05/25/the-story-behind-the-last-photograph-of-oscar-wilde-on-his-death-bed/ |
| Publication time | Mon, 25 May 2026 11:00:02 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-25T11:07:36.652Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-25T11:07:36.652Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | JK8MnrvzwSdJ |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
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The Story Behind The Last Photograph of Oscar Wilde on His Death Bed May 25, 2026 Pesala Bandara This final photograph of Oscar Wilde sold for $375k at auction this year. | Image credit: Bonhams The last known photograph of literary icon Oscar Wilde was taken on his death bed in a Paris hotel room using a borrowed camera and a volatile early flash, mere hours after he passed away. freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: "PetaPixel_728x90_ATF_Desktop", slotId: "PetaPixel_728x90_ATF_Desktop" }); freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: "PetaPixel_300x600_300x250_320x50_Mobile", slotId: "PetaPixel_300x600_300x250_320x50_Mobile" }); Earlier this year, the photograph of Wilde taken on his death bed on November 30, 1900, was sold at auction by Bonhams for $375,000…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at PetaPixel.
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