During the late 1930s and early 1940s, French painted murals for the WPA. French's early paintings are eerie, colorful tableauxs of still, silent figures derived from Archaic Greek statues. His later work shows "a kind of classical biomorphism," strange, colorful, suggestive organic forms. Jungian psychology is thought to have played an important influence upon the dream-like imagery in the paintings of French's maturity. The highly stylized, archaic-looking figures in his paintings suggest that they are representative of the ancestral memory of all mankind, what Carl Jung called "the collective unconscious". French himself was never explicit about the sources of his imagery, although on a stylistic level, the influence of early Italian Renaissance paintings by such masters as Mantegna and Piero della Francesca is evident, as it is also in the work of both Tooker and Cadmus. On the level of content, he made only one, short, public statement regarding his intentions:
My work has long been concerned with the representation of diverse aspects of man and his universe. At first it was mainly concerned with his physical aspect and his physical universe. Gradually I began to represent aspects of his psyche, until in The Sea and Evasion, I showed quite clearly my interest in man's inner reality.
In 1937, French married Margaret Hoening, also an artist who was 15 years French's senior. For the next eight years Cadmus and the Frenches summered on Fire Island and formed a photographic collective called PaJaMa. In between Provincetown, Truro, Fire Island, and New York, they staged various black and white photographs of themselves with their friends, both nude and clothed. Most of these friends featured in the photographs were among New York's young artists, dancers and writers, and most were handsome and gay. In 1938, French and Cadmus posed for a series photographs with the noted photographer George Platt Lynes. These photographs were not published or exhibited while Lynes was living and show the intimacy and relationship of the two. In the photographs, 14 of which survive today, the subjects, Cadmus and French, vacillate between exposure and concealment, with French generally being the more exhibitionist of the two. Cadmus stated that French was the model for all four male figures in his 1935 painting, Gilding the Acrobats, as well as his 1931 painting, Jerry. In addition, French modeled as John Smith for Camdus' mural in 1938, Pocahontas Rescued Captain John Smith at the Richmond Parcel Post Building. Later in the 1940s, French and his wife formed a complicated relationship with Cadmus and Cadmus' then lover, George Tooker. When French and his wife bought a home in Hartland, Vermont, they gave Cadmus a house of his own on the property. French later took the house back and gave it to his Italian lover. French died in Rome in 1988 and many of his paintings remain with his friend, Roberto Gianatta.
