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above: socrates' death by Jaques Louis David, 1787most craftmanship was still firmly in the hands of the conservative hard-labouring artists, proving that being gay certainly did not make you a better artist. Proving that a gay artist was not worse either took another full century.
above Diogène-Ulysse-Napoléon Maillard, Homerus at Skyros; below Delacroix, Dante's barque
Nevertheless,Without the help of the worldly authorities the repression system that had been firmly in place most of the time for 1400 years was finally bursting at the seams. French avant garde art-groups (Zutistes, Parnassians) seriously attempting to make the anti-bourgeous homosexual lifestyle a necessity to evolve into enlightenment and significant art-production. If you were not naturally so inclined most were helped on this path with absynth, opium and hash.
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a snakepit indeed, Rimbaud and his friend Paul Verlaine, not imstrumental in visual arts but certainly the landmark as first artists gloriously celebrating homosexual life in all it's extreme ways. As profound worshippers of the male asshole they felt pride in walking around ass smelly as they could. All that gave Rimbaud the honour of turning his name into a new verb describing oral assworship, an activity that the world until then had not needed to put into words. It made them not only role models for Jim Morrison, lou Reed, Patty Smith, the punkmovement, but most important here, they're godfathers of modern day HomoPigs and skinheads.
we're now in the age of steam. Rimbaud and Verlaine could go as far as they did because they were able to flee across borders if the ground beneath their feet got too hot. Their most glorious moments they did not have in Paris, but in Brussels and London. | 
Rimbaud may have been the prettier one, even the most talented as poet, but Verlaine deserves the title of being the original 'dirty old man' and has the honour of being depicted on the first homo-porn-pix, distributed commercially as lithographs at the end of the 19th century.  |
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 Meanwhile, just a few hundred kilometers to the east, young King Ludwig II of Bavaria is flogging his back on advice of his confessors, to subdue his urges to befriend and love his young foresters and peasants. His attempts fail and he then tries to sublimate his dark desires into art: With Richard Wagner he sets new standards for Opera and theaterdesign. Much to the dismay of his ministers he empties the state reserves completely by building dreamcastles, that now gather a yearly income for Bavaria in tourist revenue that makes the original state deficit look ridiculous. His most famous quote is: I don't want to go to war, it gets my fingernails dirty. No wonder he was declared insane and taken off the throne by his ministers. He became the role model for at least two opposites: Freddy Mercury and Walt Disney. |
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 now the floodgates are really open. Aubrey Beardsley befriends Oscar Wilde who in turn get's to meet likeminded souls like Marcel Proust and Verlaine in Paris. When the tables are turned on Wilde by British bourgeousy he finds refuge again in Paris   |
| Cupid Kindling the Torch of Hymen George Rennie 1831 V&A museum London below Bougerau, probably |
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suicide a fitting image to the dramatic end of this century
Wietz (not gay) was drawn to morbid themes, such as the image of mortality. Other astonishing works include The Last Thoughts and Visions of a Decapitated Head (1853) a statement protesting at the use of the guillotine, a triptych, no less. Death and Romantic horror in Romantic literature obsessed Wiertz. The Premature Burial of 1854 is clearly inspired by Edgar Allan Poe.At this point I should point to the Romantic gallery, in the masterclass, goint into works by preraphaelites and some aspects of art deco and Jugendstil
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 | to the 1st half of the 20th century, modelstudy, the lobby, masterclass overview or links |