Albert & Otto: Albert Wainwright's Visual Diary of Love in the 20s

The artist, Albert Wainwright (1898-1943), left behind him a series of sketchbooks, diaries and manuscripts, that detailed the private and intimate side of his life all illustrated by hand. They included details of his homosexuality and his passion for young men and it is thought that much of this material was destroyed on Albert's death by his family. However, one or two items escaped and in this book three of Albert's sketchbooks have been reproduced. They are a remarkable survival: a visual documentary of Albert's relationship with a young German called Otto during the 1920s. Two of the sketchbooks record summer trips to Germany hiking and sight-seeing with Otto and a third sketchbook presents a very personal insight into a return visit by Otto to Yorkshire. So very little personal material of this kind remains today that the sketchbooks constitute an important piece of gay history. Wainwright was an artist whose talent was once compared favourably with that of his school friend Henry Moore, but whilst Moore went on from their shared Wakefield school days to international fame and reputation as a sculptor, Wainwright remains little known today. Wainwright poured his prodigious talent into teaching, book illustration, theatre costume and set design as well as portrait painting. In his lifetime he exhibited work several times but never quite fulfilled the potential of his talent, his work is only now slowly garnering an appreciative audience and being noticed by galleries, collectors and auction houses.