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Jon Andersson (#3)

Artist Paul Cadmus (American, 1904-1999)

CultureAmerican

Date1965

MediumCrayon on paper

DimensionsOverall: 17 5/8 x 21 in. (44.8 x 53.3 cm)
Overall, Mat: 23 5/8 x 26 1/4 in. (60 x 66.7 cm)

InscribedSigned lower left: Cadmus; Inscribed lower left: Jon Andersson (#3)

Credit LineMuseum purchase made possible by donations from Mr. Edward J. Brickhouse, Henderson and Phillips, Irving Kline, the Irene Leache Memorial Association, Miller and Rhoades, Mr. A.J. Parsons, Mr. E.K. Sloane, Teagle and Little, Inc., and Mrs. Robert B. Tunstall

Object number66.57.1

Not on view

DescriptionCrayon on toned paper drawing of a man, Jon Anderson. It is a nude portrait from the waist up with a white sheet wrapped around the subjects' shoulders. He is shown in profile in a chair; his head is turned to the left.

Label TextPaul Cadmus American (1904–1999) Jon Andersson (#3), 1965 Crayon on toned paper Museum purchase from American Drawing Biennial XXII, 1967 66.57.1 Though Paul Cadmus had been known since the mid 1930s for his sensual paintings and drawings of the male figure, his work sparked renewed interest in the 1970s, when America’s newly ascendant gay rights movement began to recognize in him an exemplar due to his openly gay life and his groundbreaking depictions of homoerotic themes. Among the most famous of these are his later drawings, which focus on the solitary male nude. The subject of many of these is the actor-singer Jon Andersson, who met Cadmus in 1964 and became his life partner and the principal model of his later years. Cadmus’s serene, idealized conception of Andersson, coupled with the baroque embellishments of the ornately carved arm chair and billowing blue drapery, suggest an allusion to lofty “historical” subject matter, as though Andersson were being presented as a classical deity, a mid-twentieth-century Apollo. ProvenanceThe artist; Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences Purchase made possible by donations from Mr. Edward J. Brickhouse, Henderson and Phillips, Irving Kline, the Irene Leache Memorial Association, Miller and Rhoades, Mr. A.J. Parsons, Mr. E.K. Sloane, Teagle and Little, Inc., and Mrs. Robert B. Tunstall, 1966. Exhibition History"American Drawing Biennial XXII," Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences, Norfolk, Va., January 6 - February 5, 1967. (Exh. cat. no. 18) "The Figure," Peninsula Fine Arts Center, Newport News, Va., March 24 - May 8, 1988. "Venus and Adonis: Aspects of the Figurative Ideal in 19th- and 20th-Century Art," The Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., July 13 - November 3, 1996. "Remix: A Fresh Look At Our Modern And Contemporary Art Collections," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, November 2, 2011 - March 17, 2012. Published ReferencesIntroduction by Guy Davenport, _The Drawings of Paul Cadmus_ (New York: Rizzoli, 1989), 100. ISBN: 0847811441 Justin Spring, _Paul Cadmus: The Male Nude_ (New York: Universe Publishing, 2002), 57-59, fig. 80. **The subject's name, Anderson, is misspelled on pages 57 and 59 in reference to this drawing. ISBN: 0789305895 Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 240-241, no. 147. ISBN: 0-940744-71-6 Jeff Harrison, _Collecting with Vision: Treasures From the Chrysler Museum of Art_ (London: D. Giles Ltd., 2007), 96, fig. 116. ISBN: 978-0-940744-72-1