At Least Luigi Lucioni Got His Copy Of Ulysses Back

thirst trap head shot of paul cadmus, 24, with sculpted brows, slightly pursed lips, chin down, staring down his guy luigi, while wearing a dark wide-striped suit with a bit of a collar gap, actually, and a poppin green tie. a white cloth not quite covering the studio wall in the background
Luigi Lucioni, Paul Cadmus, 1928, oil on canvas, 16 x 12 in., acquired in 2007 by the Brooklyn Museum

In 1926 Luigi Lucioni, 26, and his Art Students League classmate Paul Cadmus, 21, were roommates for a fellowship at the Louis Tiffany Studio on Long Island. In 1928 Lucioni painted this portrait of Cadmus, which got recognition of some kind at the exhibition where it debuted.

jared french thirst trap headshot, staring down his guy luigi with his short brown hair, kind of slutty little stache, a dark v-neck over a collarless shirt, a furled white cloth the only and incomplete background
Luigi Lucioni, Jared French, 1930, oil on canvas, 18 1/4 x 15 1/8 in., acquired by the Met in 1994

In 1930 Luigi Lucioni, 30, painted this portrait of his other Art Students League classmate Jared French, 25, in what looks like the same spot he painted Cadmus. He showed it in 1931, and it sold. As did a still life, which was acquired by the Met.

a ripped white guy with short blonde hair and a small mustache is lying in bed, upper body out of the white sheets, looking straight up at the viewer and more importantly, the painter, his guy paul cadmus, . the guy's right arm is flexed, pit out, and his fist resting against his temple, and his left arm across his stomach, a finger holding a spot in a blue wrapped first edition of james joyce's ulysses. it's weird because he looks like they just had sex, yet he's holding a book, albeit one banned for some dirty parts. the painting jerry is from 1931, and is in the collection of the toledo museum, tho the subject, jared french, kept it until he died in 1988.
Paul Cadmus, Jerry, 1931, oil on canvas, 20 x 24 in., acquired by the Toledo Museum in 2008

In 1931, Cadmus painted this portrait of French in bed, with a finger in a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses resting on his bare chest. Cadmus called this his first real painting, and with French’s encouragement, he quit his commercial illustration job at an ad agency and began his career as a fine artist.

Almost no one saw this portrait publicly until after French’s death in 1988. Lincoln Kirstein included a black & white image of it in his 1992 book on Cadmus.

a 1922 edition of james joyce's ulysses, from egoist press, with a darker blue wrapper than is normally associated with the first shakespeare edition, but maybe that's just age or natural variation? anyway, sold at sothebys in 2019
1922 Egoist Press edition of Ulysses, No. 174/2000, sold at Sotheby’s in 2019

Though it was published in 1922, in 1931 there were still barely 2,500 copies of Ulysses in existence. The first edition published in Paris had 1,000 copies. The first edition published in the UK, and printed by the same French printer, had 2,000 copies, of which around 500 were reportedly burned by US Customs as they were being illegally imported. A bootleg version published in New York in 1929 was almost entirely destroyed in a raid, and also, it didn’t look like that. In 2009 a first edition of Ulysses in remarkable condition sold for GBP275,000. It had been smuggled into a Manhattan bookstore, except for the last section, with the dirty parts, it was uncut and unread. And because it went straight into a box, its cover was bright, undarkened by time.

In his 1988 oral history for the Archives of American Art, Cadmus told Judd Tully that he’d gotten the copy of Ulysses from Lucioni, who’d smuggled it from Europe. Tully asked, “What kind of impression did Ulysses make on you when you read it? Do you remember?”

“Well, I really don’t remember,” Cadmus replied, “except that, of course, I was impressed to be reading Ulysses. [laughs]”

The book was a prop. In the fall of 1931 Cadmus and French took a freighter to Europe, where they lived for two years.

a 1933 self portrait by luigi lucioni, in which a clean cut white guy of 33 with dark hair combed nearly, is standing at a 3/4 angle in his studio. he is wearing a white collard shirt under a dark sweater and a dark brown jacket, holding a dark blue covered- book, with his index finger inserted near the end. I think this is his copy of ulysses, which he had also loaned to paul cadmus. behind him is a side table of wooden cubes, with a greek head on top, and some books, including tolstoy, inside. a maroon sofa almost matches the maroon fabric on the wall of the studio. behind the artist is a folding screen. this painting sold at doyle in 2024
Luigi Lucioni, Self-portrait, 1933, 22 x 20 in., oil on canvas, sold at Doyle in 2024

In 1933, Lucioni painted a self-portrait. It was exhibited at least once, in 1926, before it turned up at Doyle last year, where it sold for 10x its estimate. Lucioni’s finger is marking a spot near the end of a thick octavo, bound in blue.

French and Cadmus came back from Europe and shared a studio and apartment until French married Margaret Hoening, at which point they shared a studio, and Cadmus and Hoening shared French. Within a few years Lucioni stopped painting portraits and spent his time making paintings and etchings of trees in Vermont.

Previously, related? Untitled (Joyce Hartley), 2025, a work based on Marsden Hartley’s inscribed copy of Ulysses, which went from Stieglitz to Georgia O’Keefe to Juan Hamilton