NEW YORK, NY.- Rago / Wright presents A Ménage with George Platt Lynes on May 6th, a significant offering of works by the influential American photographer George Platt Lynes, accompanied by a compelling selection of art and objects drawn from Lynes’s intimate circle and creative community, including works by Man Ray, Jared French, and Paul Cadmus. In conjunction with the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) Photography Show, an exhibition of select highlights will be on view at Rago / Wright’s New York gallery from April 11th to 29th; on April 23rd, the gallery will host a book signing with John Dempsey in celebration of his newly published volume Fire Island Art: 100 Years.
Currently experiencing a renewed wave of institutional attention, Lynes is widely recognized for his striking portraiture of cultural luminaries such as Salvador Dalí, Aldous Huxley, Joan Miró, and Saul Steinberg. Equally important are his groundbreaking explorations of the male nude, images that are both exquisitely composed and unapologetically erotic, positioning Lynes as a critical figure in the history of 20th-century photography and queer visual culture.
Integral to the collection are portraits of the pivotal figures who shaped Lynes’s life and career. Sent to Paris as a teenager in 1925, Lynes encountered writer Glenway Wescott and publisher Monroe Wheeler, a couple who would become his lifelong partners in both love and creative exchange. This intimate triangle—romantic, intellectual, and collaborative—served as a foundation for Lynes’s emergence within the overlapping worlds of art, fashion, and literature. Lynes also counted among his close friends Glenway’s brother, Lloyd Bruce Wescott, and his wife Barbara Harrison Wescott, who founded and operated the publishing house Harrison of Paris.
The works on offer originate from the Wescott family’s Stone-blossom property: when Lynes, Wescott, and Wheeler, along with Barbara and Lloyd, returned to the U.S. from France, they took up residence at Stone-blossom, near Union, New Jersey. The extended family would later move to Hay Meadows, an estate outside of Stockton, where the close group of friends and family would evolve to include John Connolly and Ivan Ashby. The works featured in A Ménage with George Platt Lynes thus arrive from The Connolly/Ashby Collection and many of the prints bear not only the stamp of the collectors, but personal inscriptions from Glenway Wescott as well, a celebrated and critically acclaimed writer whose attention to these respective works increases their intrigue and value.
Through photographs, artworks, and personal objects, A Ménage with George Platt Lynes celebrates Lynes’s legacy, capturing an influential creative milieu and foregrounding his bold contributions to modern photographic practice.
