Auction Highlights: Cornelius McCarthy
Auction Highlights: Cornelius McCarthy
Highlights from AFTER DARK/October 2026
Lot 6: Cornelius McCarthy (British, 1935-2009). Waiting Game, 2002. Gouache on paper. Estimated at $2,000 - $3,000.
Intimate and expressive, this exceptional array of works by the Whitechapel artist Cornelius McCarthy will head to auction this month in our upcoming AFTER DARK/October sale.
Coming from a working-class background, Cornelius McCarthy was born in 1935 in the tenement blocks of London’s historic East End. He began his art education at a young age, attending classes both in school and through charitable institutions like Toynbee Hall, eventually earning a scholarship at the renowned Goldsmiths College of Art at the University of London.
In the 1960s, he would begin exhibiting at the now-famous Whitechapel Gallery, taking inspiration from the many artists featured in Whitechapel’s exhibitions including Pablo Picasso and Keith Vaughan. The artist’s interest in the male nude as a subject was re-invigorated by the gallery’s 1962 Vaughan career retrospective, and this influence can be seen throughout McCarthy’s work. Similar to Vaughan, McCarthy placed a strong focus on light and bold colors planes as they adhere to the male body, abstracting his figures while still maintaining a basis in academic form and anatomy.
Lot 5: Cornelius McCarthy (British, 1935-2009). Boot Boy, 1983. Gouache on paper, mounted on board. Estimated at $2,000 - $3,000.
McCarthy’s work would differ significantly from Vaughan’s in his choice of subject, with the artist often featuring urban, working-class models staged against elaborate textiles and vibrant color fields. This is best demonstrated in his Boot Boy paintings, which depict young men from the titular 1970s British punk subculture, no doubt inspired by McCarthy’s own upbringing in East London.
The “Boot Boy” couple shown above were regular models for McCarthy’s paintings throughout the early 1980s, with the Boot Boy and His Bound Lover motif appearing frequently in his work. In the painting shown above, both figures are set against an array of ornate, patterned textiles, with a dog sleeping soundly in the background. The rougher associations with the boot boy model and the act of bondage are juxtaposed by the domesticity and tenderness of the setting. McCarthy uses this contrast to imply a tenderness and deeper interiority to his subject than the viewer might otherwise presuppose.
Lot 29: Cornelius McCarthy (British, 1935-2009). House of Doves, 1983. Graphite and colored pencil on paper. Estimated at $1,200 - $1,800.
It was McCarthy’s travels to Spain and the Americas that would inspire his most familiar work in the 1980s-onwards. His exposure to both the bordellos of Mexico and the Turquerie paintings of Spain would lead to his development of the male odalisque: paintings of recumbent men set against lavishly decorated interiors.
The artist’s House of Doves series comprises a number of paintings and drawings directly inspired by a bordello McCarthy had encountered during his travels. The title of the series comes from Claudio Guerin’s 1972 film of the same name, a Spanish erotic-melodrama in which a rekindled love affair quickly turns sour within the setting of an Andalusian bordello. McCarthy’s use of the bordello as a subject alludes to the Orientalist theming of the odalisque, while also playing on the historical precedent of the courtesan in art.
McCarthy’s paintings are now renowned for their tender exploration of male beauty and queer intimacy, and the artist himself is remembered as both an integral part of the East End’s historic art scene and as a canonical figure in the history of British homoerotic art.
Browse the catalog to find these works by Cornelius McCarthy and more. There’s still plenty of time to register, request condition reports, or place pre-bids on any lots you’re interested in for our upcoming October 29th auction!
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