Bob Ross Was Oscar Wilde’s Gay Lover: An Interpretation of the Latest Banksy
Robert Ross was a journalist, art critic, art dealer, and Oscar Wilde’s first male lover. Ross became Wilde’s literary executor whose job was to track down and purchase the rights to all of Wilde’s texts, which had been sold off along when Wilde was declared bankrupt.
In 1893, a few years before Wilde’s imprisonment, Ross had a sexual relationship with a 16 year old boy, who was the son of friends. The boy confessed to his parents that he had engaged in sexual activity with Ross and Lord Alfred Douglas.
Lord Alfred Douglas was a British poet and journalist who was also a lover of Oscar Wilde.
Douglas’ father, the Marquess of Queensberry, disapproved strongly of the affair, and set out to humiliate Wilde, publicly accusing him of homosexuality. Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel.
Douglas, who gave his old clothes to male prostitutes, failed to remove from the pockets incriminating letters between him and Wilde, which were then used for blackmail. He was forced to drop the libel charges and was subsequently convicted to two years for Gross Indecency.
Gross Indecency was used broadly to prosecute male homosexuals where actual sodomy could not be proven. Wilde was incarcerated in Reading Gaol — the location of Banksy’s latest painting.
While in prison, Wilde wrote De Profundis — a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas describing exactly what he felt about him, which Wilde was not permitted to send. The letter was given to Robbie Ross, with the instructions to make a copy and send the original to Lord Alfred Douglas.
Ross published the letter in 1905, five years after Wilde’s death, giving it the title “De Profundis” from Psalm 130 — the first verse is a call to God in deep sorrow, from “out of the depths.”
In the first half of the letter, Wilde recounts their previous relationship and extravagant lifestyle. He indicts both Lord Alfred’s vanity and his own weakness in acceding to his wishes.
In the second half of the letter, Wilde charts his spiritual development in prison and identification with Jesus Christ. He describes his dominance and pleasures of the literary and social scenes in London and juxtaposes them with his current position and the pain it brings.
“I have said of myself that I was one who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. There is not a single wretched man in this wretched place along with me who does not stand in symbolic relation to the very secret of life–for the secret of life is suffering”
Undoubtedly, the theme in De Profundis is self-realisation.
Robert Ross published an extract from Wilde’s instructions to him which included the author’s own summation of the work:
“I don’t defend my conduct — I explain it. I know that on the day of my release I will merely be moving from one prison into another, and there are times when the whole world seems to be no larger than my cell, and as full of terror for me. Still at the beginning I believe that God made a world for each separate man, and within that world, which is within us, one should seek to live.”
At the end of Banksy’s video, Bob Ross, the painter says: “Painting to me represents freedom. I can create the kind of world I want to see and be a part of”
I believe Banky’s prisoner is a metaphor for Oscar Wilde, who, having lost everything dear to him, does not accuse external forces, but rather escapes from his mental prison and frees himself from suffering through the artistic process.
