Collections: American Art: Portrait of Paul Cadmus

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This image is presented as a "thumbnail" because it is protected by copyright. The Brooklyn Museum respects the rights of artists who retain the copyright to their work.

Portrait of Paul Cadmus

This magnetic likeness of the young painter Paul Cadmus (1904–1999) by his colleague Luigi Lucioni is a quintessential portrait of the 1920s. Portraiture was remade during that period, as progressive artists moved beyond abstract styles and reasserted the integrity of the human figure as part of a larger postwar impulse toward order. Deeply inspired by the art of early Italian Renaissance masters, Lucioni here embraced the new realism in the firmness and clarity of his forms, and in the aggressively cropped composition. A creased white cloth frames the likeness of Cadmus, whose regard offers a disarming combination of hesitancy and penetration.


• Artist: Luigi Lucioni, American, 1900-1988
• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Dates: 1928
• Dimensions: 16 x 12 1/8 in. (40.6 x 30.8 cm) Frame: 20 3/8 x 16 1/2 in. (51.8 x 41.9 cm)
• Signature: Signed upper right: "L. Lucioni 28"
• Collections: American Art
• Museum Location: This item is on view in American Identities: A New Look, Modern Life, 5th Floor
• Accession Number: 2007.28
• Credit Line: Dick S. Ramsay Fund
• Image: Overall, 2007.28_PS2.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2009
Luigi Lucioni (American, 1900-1988). Portrait of Paul Cadmus, 1928. Oil on canvas, 16 x 12 1/8 in. (40.6 x 30.8 cm) Frame: 20 3/8 x 16 1/2 in. (51.8 x 41.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 2007.28 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2007.28_PS2.jpg)