Destruction of Jansson's Private Papers

Shortly after Jansson's death, his younger brother, Adrian, destroyed Eugène's private drawings and personal papers, presumably because he thought that these materials could tarnish Eugène's posthumous reputation. Obviously, we cannot be sure of the subjects of the drawings, but it seems likely that they included sexually explicit imagery. Undoubtedly, Jansson's diaries would have constituted a valuable resource for queer historians of his art and life.

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While lamentable from a scholarly perspective, Adrian's actions are fully comprehensible within the context of his times. Adrian was a friend of Nils Santesson, whose highly publicized trial for in 1906 stimulated public outrage against homosexuality, which led to increased surveillance of homosexuals and to intensified enforcement of laws against same-sex sexual acts. Despite his association with Santesson, Adrian managed to escape detection in the police investigations of his friends and acquaintances.

The legal authorities resolved to make an example of Santesson, who, as the director of a leading pewter foundry, was well known in artistic circles. Therefore, he was given an unusually severe sentence of ten months hard labor for committing "unnatural" sexual acts. His reputation destroyed, Santesson was unable to resume his former career after being released from prison.

After Santesson moved to Paris in 1912, Adrian maintained a steady correspondence with him. Although Adrian managed to destroy documentation of his brother's sexuality, the letters he exchanged with Santesson were preserved, and these provide valuable insights into the homosexual subculture in Sweden during his lifetime.

Conclusions

Without access to his private papers, queer historians have had to depend on innuendos by his associates as they seek to reconstruct the details of Jansson's personal life. However, his art works provide compelling evidence of his queer perspectives.

The splendid Young Man Standing in a Doorway remains a compelling affirmation of the power of queer love to flourish even in a society. In his monumental paintings of Stockholm's Naval Bathhouse, Jansson captured the emergence of a community of men bound together by mutual desire.

In 2008, Jansson's Self Portrait of 1910 was featured prominently in the Queer--Desire, Power, and Identity show at the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. This exhibition provided belated official acknowledgement of an aspect of his work that his contemporaries preferred to deny or ignore.

Several artists and art critics of the nineteenth century achieved a self-aware homosexual identity that is expressed in both their lives and their works, but lesbianism is only rarely depicted in terms of identity during this period.

A large number of significant twentieth-century European artists focused on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender themes, making such concerns crucial to the understanding of twentieth-century European art.

One of Europe's most progressive cities, Stockholm has recently become notably gay-friendly.

Throughout much of history, the nude male figure was virtually the only subject that could be used to articulate homoerotic desire in publicly displayed works of art, as well as those works of art intended for private "consumption."

A liberal and democratic kingdom, Sweden has a reputation for sexual openness, yet it maintains a law that punishes buyers of sex from prostitutes.

One of the liveliest and most versatile visual artists of his generation, David Hockney not only has helped break down resistance to the erotic gaze directed at the male body but also has presented gay male couples in domestic--rather than sensational or sexual--images.

Oscar Wilde is important both as an accomplished writer and as a symbolic figure who exemplified a way of being homosexual at a pivotal moment in the emergence of gay consciousness.