Paul Cadmus

Lloyd and Barbara Wescott

A swelling gray sky looms above an idyllic farm scene in Paul Cadmus’s Lloyd and Barbara Wescott. The artist’s delicate details, seen in the flora and fauna, farm buildings and surrounding landscape, blends themes of American Regionalism and Magical Realism. Cadmus’s subjects seem unbothered by the emerging tension between land and sky. Instead, the central figures casually pose next to their real-life award-winning livestock, flanked by the boundaries of a wooden fence and a pitchfork.

Lloyd and Barbara Westcott, the couple depicted in a moment of repose, were friends of Cadmus and often hosted artists on their farmland. Many works by Cadmus were more outwardly concerned with gritty social commentary and erotic depictions of the male form but Lloyd and Barbara Westcott quietly embeds similar themes.

In its whimsical details, the erect masculinity of the stallion counters a dairy heifer at pasture. The artist’s experience as a master draftsmen, who closely studied classical figurative compositions and painting techniques, is reflected in the precision of the work.