Because apparently men have always been worth painting.

“A half nude youth of splendid beauty faces the spectator, wearing Oriental breeches of green, with a sash of gold, and a drapery of magenta — all this splendour relieved against a figured background of dark red and gold. The scarlet hibiscus flower, held ever so languidly by the golden youth, is intended to constitute the climax of all this Oriental glory.”

That was how The Scarlet Hibiscus was described when it was exhibited at the Modern Society of Portrait Painters exhibition at the Royal Institute, Piccadilly, in 1922. The artist was Edinburgh-born William Bruce Ellis Ranken.

The painting remained in Ranken’s private collection until his death in 1941, when his collection was dispersed among public museums and galleries across Britain.

Standing almost two metres tall in its frame, The Scarlet Hibiscus was eventually donated to Nottingham Castle Museum by Ranken’s sister, Janette. It has been known there ever since as Hibiscus Flower.

The identity of the sitter remains something of a mystery. Ranken’s sister suggested that he might have been the British ballet dancer Anton Dolin. The sitter’s darker complexion would seem to argue against that identification, although Ranken was hardly above exercising a little artistic licence.

Whatever his identity, the young man is unmistakably the star of the picture. This is male beauty turned into spectacle: highly stylised, intensely decorative and with a sensual concentration on the male form. It is precisely the kind of work that makes Ranken so fascinating today, particularly as questions surrounding his sexuality have become increasingly part of the discussion of his art.

Much of Ranken’s work was destroyed during the Second World War, while the fashionable world that had once embraced his particular brand of glamour had already begun to move on. By the time he died, his social and financial fortunes had considerably diminished.

Yet perhaps the most interesting thing about Ranken is how differently we see him now. Once regarded largely as a society portraitist whose moment had passed, he is increasingly being recognised as a pioneering queer British artist — and as a painter who was quite prepared to celebrate the beauty of the male body.