Paul Cadmus (1904 – 1999), son to Egbert Cadmus, a commercial lithographer and watercolourist who had studied under the painter Robert Henri, his mother a children’s books illustrator, saw his early artistic inclinations encouraged. At the age of 15, Cadmus left high school, to enter the National Academy of Design, studying first under Charles Hinton. Taught to draw from plaster casts in preparation for the living model, Paul, two years later, was admitted to the life drawing class. He received a bronze medal from the Academy the following year for excellence in the discipline and began to study printmaking under William Auerbach-Levy in 1923 to, soon after, exhibit his work and publishing illustrations for the weekly book review section of The New York Herald-Tribune. By 1926 Cadmus completed his course work at the Academy, earning numerous scholarships and prizes for excellence. Continuing to shape his skills, he spent most of nine decades honing a singular, remarkably complex style of aesthetic idealization, which inspired his celebrated paintings, drawings, etchings, but also imaginary scenes and supercharged allegories. Although essentially unknown till about 1934, he then become famous overnight, as a minor scandal erupted over his painting The Fleet’s In!– a depiction of American sailors on shore, which aroused the ire of Navy officials. The scandal generated excellent publicity for the young artist. Like most of his work, the paintings quickly wound up in private collections. As he signed with a prestigious Midtown Galleries on Madison Av. and 57th Street, his 1937 show received a stunning seven thousand visitors.
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