Word: cadmus
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...soon sent him angrily scurrying for pen and paper. The picture in the Evening Star was that of a painting intended for the current Public Works of Art Project exhibition in Washington's Corcoran Gallery. Its title: The Fleet's In. Its artist: 29-year-old Paul Cadmus of Manhattan. Its subject: drunken sailors and bawds carousing on Manhattan's Riverside Drive...
Last week Secretary Swanson examined the Cadmus work for himself. Scratching his chin and tilting his head he remarked: "Right artistic but not true to the Navy." Thereupon Assistant Secretary of the Navy Henry Latrobe Roosevelt whisked The Fleet's In away to his Q Street home. "It's out of sight," said he, "and will continue to be out of sight...
...papers do not report Mr. Cadmus' reactions. If he is wise, he will return to his garret and get to work on a painting of Washington at Valley Forge. Better men than he have learned that the pensioner must choke his muse, dry his tears, and paint, write, or chisel as he is told. Erasmus, for example, and Samuel Johnson. Only a Michelangelo could take a papal salary, tell the Cardinals to stick to their breviaries, and finish St. Peter's as he damn well pleased...
...Paul Cadmus of New York took the Government shilling and turned out a painting entitled "The Fleet's In." It is alleged to show the jolly tars rolling about with harlots and booze, in the popular tradition of all good sailors on shore leave. It was judged good enough to be given a place in the cross-section of CWA art to be displayed at the Corcoran gallery in Washington...
Unhappily, the sailors in the painting, like Mr. Cadmus, are employees of the Government, and the Navy Department has spent a lot of time and money in combatting the tradition that its ship personnel on shore leave habitually disports itself with liquor and the ladies of the yellow filet. Admiral Rodman, who qualified as an art critic by commanding the naval forces overseas in the World War, complained that the picture originated in the imagination of one who knew nothing about sailors and their habit of spending shore leave playing ping-pong in the Y.M.C.A. The Secretary of the Navy...