OBERT BLISS
Standing Boy.
Oil on masonite, 1949. 260×915 mm; 36×10 ¼ inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.Estimate $1,500 – 2,500
It’s Gay Art Time
Art by Robert R. Bliss, 1949
Bliss is well known for his paintings of teenaged boys. Active from the late, 1940s to the early 1980s, his work has almost always been sought after by collectors. From about 1949 to 1962, he taught art at Deerfield Academy, an all-boys prep school.
Although it is difficult to understand to our 21st Century sensibilities, the parents of the Deerfield boys considered it a status symbol for Bliss to do a painting of their sons presented in a speedo. All over New England, the homes of old money preppies had distinctive, large canvases of their handsome sons in small bathing suits, all prominently displayed.
Today, in a turnabout of social mores, that practice would be considered scandalous at best. But, at the time, homosexuality was so seldom talked about, and the presumption that a man was straight was so strong, that gay men could “ply their trade” in plain sight (I enjoyed that turn of phrase!), so much so that even Liberace was thought merely “not to have found the right woman yet.”
Of course many of the boys who modeled for Bliss did so nude, and the speedos were merely applied for respectability. No one talked about what happened in the studio.
This piece was probably done just as Bliss joined Deerfield. It is emblematic of his work. A friend of mine has a Bliss piece in his collection, and it is a standout.
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