DUNCAN JAMES CORROWR GRANT was a British painter and designer of textiles, pottery, theatre sets and costumes born on this date (d: 1978). He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group..

From c 1899/1900 to 1906 Grant lived with his aunt and uncle, Sir Richard and Lady Strachey and their children. When Grant was younger, he accompanied Lady Strachey to "picture Sunday" which gave him the opportunity to meet with eminent painters. Lady Strachey was able to persuade Grant's parents that he should be allowed to pursue an education in art. In 1902 Grant was enrolled by his aunt at Westminster School of Art; he attended for the next three years. While at Westminster, Grant was encouraged in his studies by Simon Bussy, a French painter and lifelong friend of Matisse, who went on to marry Dorothy Strachey. Grant was introduced to Vanessa Bell (then Vanessa Stephen) by Pippa Strachey at the Friday Club in the autumn of 1905. From 1906, thanks to a gift of £100 from an aunt, Grant spent a year in Paris studying at the Academie de La Palette, Jacques-Emile Blanche's school. During this period he visited the Musee du Luxembourg and saw, among other paintings, the Caillebotte bequest of French Impressionists.

In January 1907, and again in the summer of 1908, Grant spent a term at the Slade School of Art. In 1908, Grant painted a portrait of John Maynard Keynes (a gay man), who he had met the previous year, while the two were on holiday in Orkney. A year later, the pair would share rooms on Belgrave Road.

In 1909 Grant visited Michael and Gertrude Stein in Paris and saw their collection that included paintings by, among others, Picasso and Matisse. In the summer, with an introduction from Simon Bussy, Grant visited Matisse himself, then living at Clamart, Paris.

Grant is best known for his painting style, which developed in the wake of French post-impressionist exhibitions mounted in London in 1910. He often worked with, and was influenced by, another member of the group, art critic and artist Roger Fry. As well as painting landscapes and portraits, Fry designed textiles and ceramics.

His father was Bartle Grant, a "poverty-stricken" major in the army, and much of his early childhood was spent in India and Burma . He was a grandson of Sir John Peter Grant, 12th Laird of Rothiemurchus, KCB, GCMG, sometime Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. Grant was also the first cousin twice removed of John Grant, 13th Earl of Dysart. 

Grant's early affairs were exclusively homosexual. His lovers included his cousin, the writer Lytton Strachey, the future politician Arthur Hobhouse and the economist John Maynard Keynes, who at one time considered Grant the love of his life because of his good looks and the originality of his mind. Through Strachey, Grant became involved in the Bloomsbury Group, where he made many such great friends including Vanessa Bell.

He would eventually live with Vanessa Bell who, though she was a married woman, fell deeply in love with him and, one night, succeeded in seducing him; Bell very much wanted a child by Grant, and she became pregnant in the spring of 1918. Although it is generally assumed that Grant's sexual relations with Bell ended in the months before Anelica was born (Christmas, 1918), they continued to live together for more than 40 years. During that time, their relationship was mainly domestic and creative; they often painted in the same studio together, praising and critiquing each other's work.

Living with Vanessa Bell was no impediment to Grant's relationships with men, either before or after Angelica was born. Angelica grew up believing that Vanessa's husband Clive Bell was her biological father; she bore his surname and his behavior toward her never indicated otherwise. Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell had formed an open relationship, although she herself apparently never had any further affairs. Duncan, in contrast, had many physical affairs and several serious relationships with other men, most notably David Garnett, who would one day marry Angelica and have four daughters with her, including Amaryllis Garnett. Grant's love and respect for Bell, however, kept him with her until her death in 1961. Angelica wrote: "(Grant) was a homosexual with bisexual leanings"

In 2020, an extraordinary stash of more than 400 erotic drawings by Duncan Grant that was long thought to have been destroyed came to light, secretly passed down over decades from friend to friend and lover to lover.

In the 1940s and 50s Grant made hundreds of drawings, many of them explicit and often influenced by Greco-Roman traditions as well as contemporary physique magazines.

In May 1959, Grant gave his friend Edward le Bas a folder marked “these drawings are very private”. The mythology in Bloomsbury circles is that the drawings were later destroyed, probably by Le Bas’s sister. That was that until Nathaniel Hepburn, the director of Charleston, the beautiful Sussex farmhouse Grant and Vanessa Bell called home, was contacted with an offer of the drawings.

The offer came from the retired theatre designer Norman Coates, who for years stored the drawings in plastic folders under his bed.

Coates said the drawings were “extraordinary, so in your face. You can’t avoid them. When I’ve occasionally brought them out to show selected friends after dinner, after the initial ‘My God’ exclamation at these very explicit drawings, they mellow … the sexual element really doesn’t dominate.

“It is the painting and the skill of his drawing and the aesthetic of it which negates the sexiness of them. It becomes irrelevant that the subject is what it is … it is a very odd feeling. It just becomes a beautiful collection of pictures.”

Coates was left the drawings by his partner, Mattei Radev, who died in 2009. Radev, a Bloomsbury mainstay who as a younger man had had a secret and tortured affair with E.M. Forster, was left them by Eardley Knollys, who died in 1991.

Knollys, who ran the influential Storran gallery in London and had an affair with Jean Cocteau, was given them by Le Bas, a painter. Le Bas was given them by Grant, a man who the economist John Maynard Keynes briefly thought might be the love of his life.

Hepburn said the drawings were often explicit fantasies but, as a whole, they were something more.

“They are, I think, a body of work that talks of love. Of course at a time they were made, that is a love that was illegal,” he said. “Hewas never able to share the works. How we see them now will be very different.”

For more on the discovery and an interesting video: 

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54447684?fbclid=IwAR2vvUKpSPJ7ha4hKW3U5FqzAF8XT_W02I5tZ72jwHnWICQhFvntkMvF3Z4 

British actor and former policeman JOHN SAVIDENT was born on this date. Best known for his role on TV programs like Yes, Minister, Coronation Street (as Fred Elliot, 1994 - 2006), Sharpe's Regiment, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders. Savident also appeared in films including Waterloo), A Clockwork Orange, The Raging Moon, Galileo, Gandhi, Remains of the Day, and Othello.

RICK WELTS is an American sports executive, serving as the president and chief operating officer for the Golden State Warriors franchise of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Prior to that post, Welts had also served as the president and chief executive officer of the Phoenix Suns from July 2002 until September 9, 2011. From 1996 to 1999, he was the third-highest-ranking official in the NBA as its executive vice president and chief marketing officer.

Born in Seattle, Washington, Welts attended the University of Washington where he joined the Delta Chi fraternity.

He worked for the Seattle SuperSonics from 1969 to 1979 in various capacities, from an initial stint as a ballboy to director of public relations when the SuperSonics won their (to date) only NBA Championship in 1979.

Welts later worked at the NBA's league offices from 1982 to 1999, eventually rising to the positions of executive vice president, chief marketing officer and president of NBA Properties. During this time, he was credited with the creation of the NBA All-Star Weekend concept in 1984 and, as the agent for USA Basketball, the marketing campaign for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics "Dream Team." He was named Brandweek's 1998 Marketer of the Year for his work with WNBA President Val Ackerman in launching the WNBA.

In May 2011, Welts publicly came out as gay in an interview with The New York Times. He is the first prominent American sports executive to come out and be openly gay. Welts is a member of the advisory board for You Can Play, a campaign dedicated to fighting homophobia in sports.

Welts's first partner, whom he had met in a Seattle restaurant in 1977, died in March 1994 due to AIDS. Welts ran one obituary in Seattle that suggested anyone who wanted to make a remembrance could write a check to the University of Washington architectural school, his partner's major. Welts was in another relationship from 1995 to 2009, which ended in part because of Welts' requirement that their relationship be hidden from public view.

In September 2011, Welts announced he was resigning his position with the Suns in order to relocate to northern California and live with his new partner there. A few weeks later, Welts signed on as team president for the Warriors. During his tenure, his leadership would help turn the Warriors into a perennial contender, winning three out of five championships from 2015 to 2019. On March 31, 2018, it was announced Welts would be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

In January 2020, Welts married Todd Gage, his partner of nine years, at San Francisco City Hall. The ceremony was officiated by mayor London Breed.

In April 2021, Welts announced that he would step away from his position with the Warriors at the end of the season, but would remain as advisor for the team.

DAN PALLOTTA is an American entrepreneur, author, and humanitarian activist born on this date. He is best known for his involvement in multi-day charitable events with the long-distance Breast Cancer 3-Day walks, AIDS Rides bicycle journeys, and Out of the Darkness suicide prevention night walks. Over nine years, 182,000 people participated in these events and raised $582 million. They were the subject of a Harvard Business School case study. He is the author of Uncharitable – How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential, the best-selling title in the history of Tufts University Press. He is also the author of Charity Case: How the Nonprofit Community Can Stand Up for Itself and Really Change the World, and When Your Moment Comes – a Guide to Fulfilling Your Dreams. He is the president of Advertising for Humanity and president and founder of the Charity Defense Council. He is a featured contributor to Harvard Business Review online.

During the summer before Pallotta's senior year at Harvard he heard about two cyclists crossing America to raise money for cancer research. It inspired him to create a cross-country bike ride for world hunger. He and his co-chair, Mark Takano (now a Congressman representing the 41st district in California) recruited 39 students to make the journey. During the summer of 1983 they traveled 4,256 miles along a primarily northern route over the course of 9 1/2 weeks from Seattle to Boston. They crossed the continental divide at 9,658 feet at Togwotee Pass in the Absaroka Mountains of the United States, between the towns of Dubois and Moran Junction, Wyoming. The event raised approximately $80,000 for Oxfam-America. Pallotta appeared on television and radio during the course of the ride, including an in-studio appearance with Bryant Gumbel on the Today show.

In 1985 Pallotta moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a singer and songwriter. He was auditioned by Clive Davis and had a single recorded by Edgar Winter and sang the national anthem at Anaheim Stadium for the Los Angeles Rams. During his time in Los Angeles he also met David Mixner, a leading civil rights activists, and went to work on Mixner's Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, envisioned as a 5,000-person march across America to promote nuclear disarmament. He also met and worked with Irving Warner, author of Bantam Books' The Art of Fundraising, who mentored him in the field of major gift fundraising.

Pallotta was aware that there was “nothing big” for the average person to do about AIDS. It was the same feeling of frustration he had at Harvard looking at the gap between world hunger and the small fundraising events designed to address it. In 1991, building on the 'power of the journey' as a metaphor, he conceived of a 600-mile bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which combined his marketing, fundraising, mobilizing and motivating skills. Three years later, the movie Alive motivated him to realize his idea. He brought his plan for the event to the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Community Services Center, which was looking for a new signature event. The Center put up an initial investment of $50,000 in risk capital, which was enough for the effort to survive until a sponsorship was secured from Tanqueray for an additional $110,000. 478 people participated in the first California AIDS Ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, netting $1,013,000 – much more than expected.

From 1995 to 1996 Pallotta expanded the AIDS Rides to include San Francisco, Boston, New York, Chicago, the Twin Cities, Miami, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and Raleigh, North Carolina. This writer had the privilege, and great experience of doing two of these rides.

The model was new in that it was the first time a “thon” event came with a four-figure mandatory fundraising minimum, and was marketed on a large scale in major metropolitan media. Up until that time, “thon” events had welcomed people no matter how much or how little they raised. This was democratic, but not a powerful revenue model. 

Pallotta built his for-profit charitable company Pallotta TeamWorks in 1994. His company employed 400 full-time people in 16 U.S. offices and was raising $169 million annually by 2002. In total, the company raised $582 million from 1994 to 2002. The company charged a fixed production fee for its services. It did not do commission-based fundraising or get a "take" off of the top. One hundred percent of all donations went to lock boxes under the charities' exclusive control. The charities then reimbursed the company for its expenses on a dollar-for-dollar basis. Pallotta TeamWorks fees, in a hindsight calculation, amounted to 4.01% of funds raised.

Pallotta was criticized for the large amounts of money Pallotta TeamWorks was making each year and the $394,500 salary he was receiving, described as "stratospheric" for the aid world. His annual salary ranged from $150,000 in 1994 to approximately $425,000 in 2002. Palotta commented that "We allow people to make huge profits doing any number of things that will hurt the poor, but we want to crucify anyone who wants to make money helping them".

ALEXANDER LINCOLN , born on this date,  is a British actor best known for his portrayals of Jamie Tate in Emmerdale from 2019–2021 and Mark Newton in the 2022 romantic drama film In from the Side with Alexander King [seen on the right in the accompanying picture].

In a recent post, Lincoln celebrated his long-list nomination for "Breakthrough Performance" at the 2022 British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) from his appearance on In From the Side. In the comments section, a fan praised the movie but asked if the actors in it were just "posing as gay." Lincoln responded: "Thanks so much - really appreciate it!!!!" Lincoln replied on Instagram. "And no, I'm not straight [heart emoji]."

YAY for our team!

VITA SACKVILLE-WEST writes a love letter, dated this date, to VIRGINIA WOOLF that begins their love affair.  The affair between Virginia and Vita, who were both married, was not considered shocking within Virginia’s bohemian social circle — The Bloomsbury Group was accepting of bisexuality and open marriages.

Vita was a huge cheerleader for Virginia, trying to build her confidence to leave her self-imposed isolation and to believe in her skills as a writer. The letters between the two writers, The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, have become one of lesbian history’s most treasured works, and Virginia’s novel Orlando was inspired by Vita.

They met in 1922 and were friends for a few years before the relationship turned sexual, as faithfully documented in Virginia's diaries. Although the affair ended in 1927 or 1928, they remained close friends.

ABC television station in Los Angeles refused to air a Public Service Announcement about Gay families claiming it was "too controversial" to run during inauguration coverage. KABC-TV in Los Angeles refused to run public service announcements from Get To Know Us First, a group that promotes acceptance of LGBT families.  2009 people...just twenty years ago.