Mark’s portrait of Oscar Wilde is an interpretation of the photograph by Napoleon Sarony that has come to be the image through which Wilde is universally recognised. The portrait, with the hints of degeneration that serve as reminders that Wilde was the inventor of the most celebrated of all portraits in fiction, is more a complex dialogue between painter and subject than a simple representation of an admired writer.
“I first started painting literary figures when reading Robert Graves’ “Goodbye to All That”, his beautifully written account of a harrowing experience serving the full term of World War One.
The next task seemed the most daunting, to do justice to one of my favourite authors, to try and encapsulate in a painting all that was Oscar Wilde.
I read Oscar from a young age and he quickly became one of my all time favourite authors.
He has inspired me not only artistically but also personally.
I have always appreciated his insight into the society that he lived in but also into the human condition, which he sometimes very cleverly mocks, sometimes subtly, sometimes with great and humorous irreverence.
Oscar Wilde, a writer whom I’ve admired most of my life not only for his politically and socially perspicuous plays, depicting with great humour and insight the era in which he lived. I have always enjoyed Oscar’s sharp and poignant wit and have quoted him in my daily life for many years.
The painting had to have many elements in an attempt to come close to portraying everything this great man was.
It had to have subtlety, beauty, intelligence, mystery, elegance and flamboyance to name but a few of his qualities”.
