Handsome American Military WWII Portrait by Mildred Perman, 1935

WWII, how are you? Private Theater: Gay American Soldier in Reflection, Original WWII-Era Gouache, Signed CSG A highly nuanced, emotionally layered, and visually accomplished original painting in gouache and watercolor on Whatman drawing board, signed CSG lower right. This rare mid-20th-century work portrays a seated U.S. Army Air Forces officer—smiling faintly, cigarette in hand, and with a small black-bound diary resting on his lap—lost in reverie as smoke from his cigarette rises and transforms into the visages of three idealized male figures. Rendered in an illustrative realist style with tonal sensitivity and surreal suggestion, the composition invites interpretation as an interior portrait of desire, intimacy, and memory—quietly coded, emotionally sincere, and possibly autobiographical. The figure wears a regulation-issue A-2 leather flight jacket, iconic of U.S. Army Air Forces personnel during WWII. The jacket is detailed with a personalized, hand-painted circular patch depicting a lion rampant in a blue roundel—a heraldic symbol of power, pride, and possibly self-invention. An American flag patch is affixed to the left shoulder. The jacket, traditionally worn by bomber crews, officers, and pilots, functions here not only as a marker of military identity but as a gendered and cultural signifier—suggesting the complex intersection of duty, masculinity, and private identity. The slightly open collar, relaxed posture, and cigarette suggest the officer is off-duty—physically grounded but mentally elsewhere. The seated figure’s companions—summoned in smoke—appear above and behind him in a dreamlike procession: a helmeted infantryman, a pilot in goggles, and a hat-wearing civilian (?) man posed in pin-up style. Each face is rendered with tenderness and idealization, not as ghosts or casualties, but as romantic or erotic conquests: remembered lovers, fleeting encounters, or imagined partners. Their expressions, softly lit and emotionally present, reflect a form of desire neither tormented nor tragic. This is not a meditation on loss but on intimacy remembered, perhaps treasured. On the table beside him rests a small bronze Buddha...

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