Artists - Part 73

William Horace Littlefield

William Horace (Bill) Littlefield (1902-1969) was a gay American painter known for figure studies of male nudes, and later for abstract work.  Above, Littlefield in 1935.

A sketch called Triton & Nymph, 1928.  The male model was Nicholas Podiapolski, who was Littlefield's model in the late 1920s and also his lover.

A 1933 study of Apollo for a painting Apollo and Daphne.  In the final painting, Apollo is draped, not nude.  Paul Thorpe was the model.

Eros with a Bow, 1933.  We'll see another Eros with a Bow later.

These look like gay lovers, but it's a depiction of Odysseus & Telemachus reunited after the Trojan War.  In Homer's Odyssey, Telemachus was Odysseus' son.

Perseus with the Head of Medusa, 1941.

Acteon in Flight, Arrested by Swift Arrows, 1941-42.  All of these subjects are mythological.  Portraying a mythological naked male was socially acceptable at the time.

In the 1950s, Littlefield's style, which had been realistic, switched to abstract expressionist.  Warrior, 1950, is still recognizable as a human figure with buttocks.

Compare Eros with a Bow and Quiver, 1953 (above) to Eros with a Bow twenty years earlier.  The bow looks pretty much the same.  Eros, not so much.

Sometimes Littlefield plunged into pure abstract art.  This is called The Force of Modesty, 1956.

But his interest in nude males was still there.  We end with Dog Tags, 1959, a rare non-abstract late work.