Paul Cadmus

Paul Cadmus [b. 1904, New York; d.1999, Weston, Connecticut, USA] was a figurative painter who came to national attention as a result of the US Navy’s confiscation of his 1934 painting The Fleet’s In!. Though his work of the late 1940s and 1950s was somewhat eclipsed by the rise of Abstract Expressionism, he enjoyed a loyal collecting base [including Cole Porter, Lincoln Kirstein and, later, Malcolm Forbes] throughout his long career. In the 1970s, he was reclaimed by the gay press as a pioneering figure whose homoerotic art had cleared the way for Tom of Finland and Robert Mapplethorpe, among many others. Cadmus continued to make art, including numerous nude sketches of his lover Jon Andersson, until his death a few days shy of his ninety-fifth birthday.