Untitled (or title presently unknown). 1946. Oil on canvas. 14 x 22"; 22 1/2 x 26 1/2" (overall). Few examples of Arthur B. Long's homoerotic paintings are now known to exist. Another recorded example from the March 1944 issue of Art News is also coded with references to gay desire (see image attached).

In this 1946 double portrait, similar to the painting published in 1944, homoerotic desire is overt, when compared to the oblique references in the notorious Paul Cadmus "Fleets In," and which had caused a national scandal in 1934. Overt homoerotic depictions in 1946 carried significant legal, professional and personal risks. It was just a year later, in 1947, the Lavender Scare began, and anything written or produced depicting or suggesting homosexuality would have carried risks, as a moral panic and ensuing persecutions fueled by the demagogue Senator Joseph McCarthy swept over America.

In this painting, Long pushed the bounds of what could be shown or said, more so than any other known example of an American painter. A gay man in the know would have understood the depiction of a Moroccan young man in a Fez as a reference to Tangier, which was then a haven for gay men (e.g., Isherwood, Bowles, and Burrows), and the image of a split watermelon as a tongue and cheek reference to gay sex.

Long had a one-man show at the Wakefield Gallery in New York (February 21–March 4, 1944). The Wakefield was run by the influential art dealer Betty Parsons. She left in 1944 to direct the Mortimer Brandt Gallery on East 57th St., where she would establish her own gallery two years later. Long exhibited at the 1940 Second Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Paintings at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Another example of his homoerotic work, also a male double portrait, is recorded in the March 1944 issue of Art News.

The whereabouts of Long's other paintings from this period are presently unknown; it is possible they were all destroyed, or possibly some survived. This painting was found with the estate collection housed at 76 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA, assembled from the 1980s to the early 2010s. The house, once Han's Hofmann's studio and before Frederick Judd Waugh's studio, contained the majority of artworks in this estate art auction. Every lot is sold "as is," "where is," and "without warranty," whether express or implied. Art has not been examined outside of the frame unless otherwise stated.

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