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Lot Essay
Gluck celebrated her intense love affair and 'marriage' with the American socialite, Nesta Obermer, in the present work, a double portrait of the artist and her lover. Gluck called the portrait 'YouWe' and it consoled her through long periods apart while her lover travelled the world with her wealthy husband. She kept the portrait in her studio, enjoying the provocativeness of the intensity of the image of the two women and the relationship it implied (see D. Souhami, op. cit., p. 121-125).
It was later used on the dust jacket of Virago Press's 1982 publication of The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe-Hall's ground-breaking novel of lesbian love, first published in 1928, when it was banned as obscene by the British courts after a dramatic trial.
It was later used on the dust jacket of Virago Press's 1982 publication of The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe-Hall's ground-breaking novel of lesbian love, first published in 1928, when it was banned as obscene by the British courts after a dramatic trial.