American painter Edward Melcarth was BOTD in 1914. Born Edward Epstein in Louisville, Kentucky, his father died when he was a child and his mother remarried a wealthy British aristocrat. He was educated in London and Harvard University, later studying art in Boston. He travelled through Europe in the late 1930s, becoming inspired by Venetian painter Tintoretto to become an artist. Settling in New York City, he became an active figure in the art scene and exhibiting at the Museum of Modern Art. His celebrity friends included Peggy Guggenheim (for whom he designed her famous bat-shaped sunglasses), Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal and publisher Malcolm Forbes, who became an avid collector of his work. Bucking the trend for Abstract Expressionism, he combined his twin passions for Communism and hot working-class men in a style called “Social Romanticism”, painting highly sexualised male nudes, frequently using the sailors, hustlers and working-class trade he picked up as his models. He had a long term relationship with fellow artist Thomas Painter, sharing apartments and lovers, and were both interviewees of sexologist Alfred Kinsey for Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Seeking to avoid the draft during World War Two, he moved to Iran where he worked as a truck driver, enjoying the more sexually enlightened culture of the Middle East. In the late 1960s, under surveillance from the FBI for his political activities, he moved to Venice, shifting his focus to sculpture. He died in 1973, aged 59. Largely forgotten at his death, his work has been rediscovered by art historians, with exhibitions of his work in New York and Kentucky.