In the 1930s a scandal broke out in the USA over the depiction of sailors in Paul Cadmus's painting The Fleet's In, which became the subject of official proceedings after Rear Admiral Hugh Rodman found the canvas, with its drunken and carousing sailors…

In the 1930s a scandal broke out in the USA over the depiction of sailors in Paul Cadmus's painting The Fleet's In. It became the subject of official proceedings after the retired Admiral Hugh Rodman found the canvas, with its drunken and carousing sailors, insulting to the entire Navy and had it removed from an exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery. This was the first step towards making Paul Cadmus one of the most discussed and most exhibited artists in the States. The quarrelsome admiral brought the young painter national fame. The picture, with its merry sailors in the arms of women and its homoerotic undertone, was reproduced in a great many newspapers, and the public debate around “offensive” art only fanned interest in the artist. Cadmus would later paint other controversial pictures with a pointed social message, and decades on he would be called one of the creators of the visual image of the gay way of life. With this he himself did not agree, any more than with his reputation as a fighter for homosexual rights, explaining that he simply painted what he saw.