Wallis Death of Chatterton
A portrait from 1856 of the impoverished late 18th-century poet Thomas Chatterton, who poisoned himself in despair at the age of 17. The portrait, which now hangs in London’s Tate Museum, was painted by pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis, who idealized Chatterton as did the 19th-century wit, novelist, playwright and fancy-dresser Oscar Wilde. Wilde’s admiration of Chatterton is the subject of a new book by UCLA English professor Joseph Bristow.