This voluptuous dreamy risqué redhead was created as calendar pin up art for the Goes Litho Company by the prolific and talented female Chicago area illustrator Pearl Frush. A red headed femme-fatale, loosely styled after Jean Harlow from her starring turn in the 1932 film Red Headed Woman, appears in a floppy wide brimmed straw hat with a seductive glaze and intense presence. A remarkable painting that bears the artist’s early married signature of “Pearl Frush Brudon” lower right. Painting has been handsomely silk matted under glass and framed in a fine gold gallery frame, a published vintage calendar print is included in the sale.

Pearl Frush was one the twentieth century’s leading female pin-up illustrators, and worked steadily with many of the USA’s premiere calendar companies. She was adept at creating life-like illustrations using pastel, gouache and watercolors.

Born in Iowa, she initially enrolled in art classes in New Orleans, with further training in Philadelphia and New York, Before eventually studying at the Chicago Art institute under Charles Schroeder. The attention to detail on Frush’s artwork was often much more intricate than that of similar artists, lending an almost photo-realist quality to some of her work.