A costumed flapper girl, dressed to the nines in jazz-age fineries at a masquerade ball, is seductively caught in the light of a romantic full moon in this oil on canvas by J. Walter Wilkinson. The artist was a prominent and revered American illustrator, and we presume this to be a magazine cover for an as-of-yet unidentified Golden Age periodical. Some highlights of Wilkinson’s career include a cover for The Saturday Evening Post for their Halloween issue in October of 1932, and the iconic Keep ’em Flying series of posters he created for the US military during World War II. The majority of the artist’s estate is now in the Smithsonian Institute’s permanent collection.
Painting is in a very fine state of conservation on original back stretchers and handsomely framed.
J. Walter Wilkinson was an award winning commercial artist, perhaps best known for a series of six war bond posters he and his son Walter G. Wilkinson (1917-1971) created for the United States Treasury Department. J. Walter Wilkinson was born on Maryland’s eastern shore, received formal academic training in art, and worked on newspapers and at an advertising agency before becoming a free lance artist. In addition to his war posters and other government commissions, he created a number of outdoor and magazine advertisements and many magazine covers. Major products for which Wilkinson did advertising art work included Ivory soap, Pabst beer, and Ballantine ale.
