London's Tite St:  Street of Wonderful, Queer Possibilities

Professor Andrew Lear is a world-renowned expert on sexuality in art and the author of the best-known book on sexuality in Greek vase-painting.  He is the founder of Oscar Wilde Tours, the gay history tour company, and Shady Ladies Tours, the woman's history tour company.

Andrew Lear

A tour of London’s Tite Street, highlighting its history of queer talent, from Wilde and Sargent to Radclyffe Hall and beyond.

It was from his famous home on Tite St in 1889 that Oscar Wilde glimpsed the actress Ellen Terry, dressed as Lady Macbeth and entering the studio of artist John Singer Sargent. Wilde later reminisced: ‘The street that on a wet and dreary morning has vouchsafed the vision of Lady Macbeth in full regalia, can never against be as other streets. It must always be full of wonderful possibilities.’ While most know that Oscar lived in Tite Street for ten years, few are aware that his closest neighbours in the street included a range of key figures in LGBTQ art, literature, and history. From the 1880s until the 1930s, Tite Street was the epicentre of London’s artistic avant-garde, serving as a safe haven for those living and creating on the margins of society including many great queer talents. Across the street from Oscar Wilde’s house, John Singer Sargent lived and worked for over forty years, keeping a private album of homoerotic drawings of male nudes, mostly of his handsome young Italian model and valet, Nicola d’Inverno. From his studio in Tite Street, gay artist Glyn Philpot, painted many iconic queer works including his famous portrait of the poet Siegfried Sassoon. After leaving her gay husband in Capri, lesbian artist Romaine Brooks escaped to Tite Street and would return many years later to paint the cross-dressing queer Jewish artist, Gluck, in a gender-bending portrait known as Peter, A Young English Girl (1923-24). Prominent lesbian author Radclyffe Hall briefly lived in Tite Street and would later draw inspiration from Wilde’s confessional prison letter, De Profundis, during the tumultuous trial her own novel, The Well of Loneliness (1928), derided as ‘obscene’ for its same-sex characters and themes. Why did Tite Street draw so much queer talent? To find out more please join author and historian Dr Devon Cox for an illustrated tour of the street highlighting its many queer inhabitants while exploring its importance in LGBTQ+ history.

Dr Devon Cox is author of The Street of Wonderful Possibilities: Whistler, Wilde &amp; Sargent in Tite Street (Frances Lincoln, 2015). Originally from the USA, he moved to London after completing his degree and has worked as a researcher at the Imperial War Museum, London and Sotheby's auction house. He completed an AHRC-funded PhD at the University of Warwick and is currently serving as a Research Associate with the Paul Mellon Centre in London. He has appeared in several TV programmes for Arte, BBC, and Sky Arts.

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London's Tite St: Street of Wonderful, Queer Possibilities

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