Charles Warren Stoddard. Courtesy Syracuse University Library.

Francis Davis Millet. Courtesy Syracuse University Library.

In 2012, on the 100th anniversary of the death on the Titanic of painter Frank Millet, OutHistory published transcriptions of Millet’s letters to writer Charles Warren Stoddard. The letters indicate that the two had a loving, sexual affair in Venice in 1875.

OutHistory is grateful to Claude Gruener, a gay artist and writer in Albany, New York, for transcribing these often hard to read letters, which are collected in the Syracuse University Library. Note that the year was usually added to the letters in pencil (possibly by Stoddard) after the month and day and is sometimes conjectural.

In addition to the transcribed letters, this exhibit includes biographical sketches, a bibliography, and a revised version of Jonathan Ned Katz's chapter on Millet and Stoddard from Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality (University of Chicago Press, 2001).

In a press release that was disseminated when the transcriptions were originally published on OutHistory, Katz highlighted the importance of these letters, saying, "A fascinating aspect of Millet’s devotion to Stoddard is that just eight months after he realizes that Stoddard will never settle down with him in a domestic relationship, Millet is writing friends about his love for and impending marriage to Lily Merrill. In this era, no homosexual-heterosexual divide told people they had to be either gay or straight, and Millet is a good example of that era’s erotic fluidity."