Photo featuring Oscar Wilde as a student at Oxford in 1876 found in old album

A NEWLY discovered photograph of Irish author Oscar Wilde before he found literary fame will go under the hammer this month.

The Dublin-born writer features in a group photograph taken in 1876 when he was a student at Oxford University’s Magdalen College.

Wilde arrived at the college as an undergraduate in 1874 and graduated four years later.

The photo was taken as Magdalen College in 1876

By that time he had become one of Oxford’s most recognisable figures.

The group photograph, which features both students and teachers, was taken in the Cloisters of Magdalen College, when Wilde would have been 21 or 22 years old.

Oscar Wilde features in the second row

“The image has recently been discovered within a Victorian album of photographs”, a spokesperson for Dominic Winters Auctioneers confirmed this week.

“Among over 50 men are loosely arranged in three rows and mostly wearing suits and either bowler hats or boaters,” they explain.

“Wilde appears in a bowler hat facing the camera five from the left of the middle row, with his close circle of friends arranged nearby, including: E. Cholmley Jones, William Welsford Ward, Rowland Childers and Reginald Harding,” they add.

“The photograph also features Christian Frederick Cole (1852-1885), who was the first black graduate of the University of Oxford.”

A portrait of the Kennedy family also features in the auction

The photo album will go up for sale in their Photographs, Posters & Postcards, Autographs, Documents & Ephemera sale, which takes place tomorrow (May 20), where it is estimated to fetch between £3k to £5k.

Also up for auction is a previously unpublished Kennedy family portrait, and a rare signed image of Winston Churchill on horseback.

The Kennedy portrait was taken in London in 1939 during Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.’s tenure as U.S. ambassador to Britain.

Being auctioned directly from photographer Marcus Adams’ personal archive, it includes the young John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy.

This photo of Winston Churchill is also up for sale this week

The Churchill photograph was taken in  Chartwell in 1948, and is described as “an unexpectedly informal portrait of the wartime leader in a relaxed rural setting, far removed from the statesman most often pictured in public life”.

Each item will feature in the Dominic Winter Auctioneers’ Photographs, Posters & Postcards, Autographs, Documents & Ephemera sale on May 20, with estimates ranging from £500 to £5,000.

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