Original 4 x 5.5 half-length albumen photo of a seated Whitman with a butterfly perched on his outstretched finger, affixed to a 6 x 8.5 mount. In very good condition, with light overall spotting to image and some light rippling, foxing and soiling to mount.

Taken by Phillips & Taylor in Philadelphia, 1873, this was one of Whitman’s favorite photographs, and it was this image which Whitman gave to Oscar Wilde when they met in 1882 and which he later selected as the frontispiece of the 1889 birthday edition of Leaves of Grass. “Yes–that was an actual moth...the picture is substantially literal: we were good friends: I had quite the in-and-out of taming, or fraternizing with, some of the insects, animals,” Whitman told the historian William Roscoe Thayer.  Years later Whitman’s “butterfly” was found in the Library of Congress. It was made of cardboard; it had been tied to his finger with string.

“What is not often noted is that the photo simply enacts one of the recurrent visual emblems in the 1860 and 1881 editions of Leaves: a hand with a butterfly/perched on a finger. Dr. R. M. Bucke read the image symbolically: ‘The butterfly … represents, of course, Psyche, his soul, his fixed contemplation of which accords with his declaration: ‘I need no assurances; I am a man who is preoccupied of his own soul.’” (Folsom,  “Notes on Photographs,” 1880s, no. 18)