Porter's complicated feelings about Schuyler and his wife and children, may be indicated in one of his best-known works, The Screen Porch (1964). In the painting, Porter depicts Schuyler seated, reading a book, on a screened-in porch, with Porter's two daughters, Katherine and Elizabeth, standing close by, while Anne Porter stands outside looking in. As Justin Spring noted in his biography of Porter, "[T]he image is remarkable for the odd tension which seems to exist among the four subjects, and by extension, the painter, whose perspective is taken by the viewer."

Sponsor Message.

Several of Schuyler's poems, especially "Southampton and New York" (1972), "The Island" (1972), and "The Morning of the Poem" (1980), are intimate meditations on the life Schuyler led with the Porters.

Ultimately, however, Schuyler's mental instability became too much for even the Porters, and he was asked to leave. He returned to New York City and lived a relatively reclusive life until his death in 1991.

Death and Posthumous Reputation

Porter died at the age of 68 on September 18, 1975, of a massive coronary, while walking his dog near his home in Southampton.

After his death over 230 of his works were donated to the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, while many other Porter paintings can be seen at such institutions as The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; the Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas; The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others.

Porter's art writings were collected and published in 1979 as Art in Its Own Terms: Selected Criticism, 1935-1975, with an introduction by the art critic Rackstraw Downes.

Hilton Kramer, in his review of the book for The New York Times, called Porter "one of the most important critics of his time," who produced "consistently sensitive and thoughtful writing on new art, and on the art of the recent past."

Porter's poems were published in 1985, with thirteen selected drawings as illustrations and an introduction by John Ashbery. A selection of his letters was published in 2005.

His paintings received their first major retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1983. The exhibition met with record-breaking attendance. The show reopened in New York at the Whitney Museum of American Art the following year.

A second major exhibition, "Fairfield Porter: An American Painter," opened at the Parrish Art Museum in 1993. The show received a strong critical reception, and travelled throughout the U.S.

Art historian William C. Agee, the show's curator, noted in his catalog essay, "Porter led the way to show you can work figuratively in an age of abstraction and still be a viable artist. His work . . . is deep, complex, and rich."

Prior to Stonewall, most gay artists were closeted, but they were inventive in creating codes for those in the know; after 1945 some adventurous artists developed independent networks for the distribution of works of gay art.

Off and on over two centuries, New York City has also reigned as the capital of homosexual, transgender, and queer life in America.

The gay tradition in literature from ancient times to the present is primarily a tradition not of prose but of verse.

John Ashbery, one of the leading contemporary American poets, avoids explicit gay content in his poetry, but his work shares concerns with other late twentieth-century gay writing.

Richard Howard's searching and witty poetry, in which homosexuality is not a problem but a solution, is a significant contribution to the gay and lesbian literary heritage.

James Merrill's significance as a gay writer lies in his deliberate use of a personal relationship to fuel his poetry.

The influential poet Frank O'Hara wrote works informed by both modern art and the world of urban gay male culture.

One of the pioneers of Pop Art, Larry Rivers was a prolific artist, sculptor, and jazz musician; although he did not identify as a bisexual, the twice-married artist had significant same-sex sexual experience.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Schuyler, a prominent member of the New York School of poets and painters, wrote openly about his homosexuality.