The first color monograph on the artist Glyn Philpot - a key figure in Modern British art Glyn Philpot (1884-1937) was a key figure in Modern British art in the first half of the twentieth century, whose work spanned Arts and Crafts illustration, Edwardian "Swagger" portraiture, Symbolism, and Art Deco Modernism. Drawing on new research and recently rediscovered paintings and archive material, the first color monograph on the artist looks at his career from early works comprising more traditional formal portraiture through to modernism in the 1920s and 30s. Exploring Philpot's engagement with international modernism, it looks at his exposure to American art and the Harlem Renaissance, Neue Sachlichkeit in Berlin and the impact of living and working in Paris, especially the work of Rodin, Matisse, Picasso, and Cocteau. It also considers Philpot's work in the light of recent queer theory and writing on race, discussing Philpot's impact on queer writers and artists, including more recent works by Isaac Julien--in particular his film 'Looking for Langston'--and writers such as Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst, who provides an introduction to this volume.

'The latest news in the art world is that Mr Glyn Philpotts [sic] has been asked to remove his picture from the RA...' Virginia WoolfGlyn Philpot (1884-1937) was a portrait, figure and still-life painter and a sculptor. One of the most financially successful portrait painters of his generation, he achieved early prominence in both Britain and America. Philpot was a senior public figure who embodied deep personal contradictions. In 1933 at the age of 49, he submitted The Great Pan to the Royal Academy. The painting made explicit what had for so long been a coded language within homosexual writing and art and the artist suffered the ignominy of public rejection.The young Glyn Philpot circulated in the close company of the Edwardian aesthetes. Portraits financed his more committed work on subject pictures. In the Symbolist tradition, they reflect his deepest concerns: religious themes reveal a profound knowledge of his adopted Catholicism, while an increasing interest in the male nude and a series of superb portraits of young men, his black servants, models, friends and lovers, show the gradual public expression of his homosexuality. The tensions between his public and personal lives led Philpot to spend long periods outside Britain. In 1931, he visited Berlin. His encounter with that city's homosexual underworld had a profound spiritual and emotional effect and Philpot adopted a new style which owed much to international modernism.Philpot's new style was greeted with overt hostility. The scandal led to a period of acute financial hardship which undoubtedly contributed to the artist's early death at 53. Tragically, Philpot did not live long enough to see what he regarded as his most ambitious work accepted or approved. His reputation as a portraitist never faltered, but his subject pictures remain controversial. In 1985, the National Portrait Gallery, London staged a major retrospective of his work.In this fascinating account of an artist whose career bridged the transition between Edwardian aestheticism and international modernism, Paul Delaney has skilfully brought together disparate elements to reveal the personal, social and artistic crises that transformed Glyn Philpot's work.