Two Boys on a Beach (After Paul Cadmus). Copy of the 1938 etching by Cadmus, 1951. Ink and graphite on board. 279 x 406 mm; 11x16 in. Unsigned. Inscribed "Copy of a Paul Cadmus, 2-4-51" on verso.
Raised in a Protestant household fearing sexuality, Samuel Steward quickly realized he was attracted to other boys. Steward attended Ohio State University and graduated with a Ph.D. in English in the early 1930s. He taught at Ohio State during his last year there and, after graduation, moved around to teaching positions at Carroll College in Montana, Washington State University, and Loyola University in Chicago. He arrived at Loyola in 1937, but left academia believing it didn't afford him enough time for writing, or his other passion, tattooing. He used the moniker Phil Sparrow in the early 1960s as a tattoo artist on Chicago's notorious South State Street. Steward worked closely with Alfred Kinsey on his landmark sex research. In 1964, he took his tattooing skills to California when he relocated to the East Bay Area. He was the tattoo artist of the Hells Angels Motorcycle club. Steward became an intimate friend of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Thornton Wilder while maintaining a secret sex life from childhood on, documenting these experiences in brilliantly vivid (and often very funny) detail.
Using the aliases Ward States, John McAndrews, and Donald Bishop, he was a prolific essayist in the first European gay magazines; as Phil Andros, he was the author of a series of popular pornographic gay novels during the 1960s and 1970s. He used drugs throughout his life and became addicted to barbiturates at the end of his life. He also struggled with his psychological health, suffering "through long periods of dark depression, loneliness and self-destructive behavior."
