This jubilant pastel portrait of a young beaming pre-code chorine is an early signed offering by the famed pin-up artist Earl Moran. Dating to the early 1930s, the image appears to feature a young  Alice Faye, who made her Broadway debut in George White’s Scandals in 1931 and made the move to Hollywood when the film version of the show was produced in 1934.

 

At the moment this work dates to, Moran was living and working in New York, struggling to build a name for himself as an illustrator, and spending as many free moments as he could in the company of chorus girls and models.  This pastel was likely created by Moran as a calling card of sorts to get cover work for one of the 1930s Hollywood Movie magazine titles, as it has all the hallmarks of the style favored by magazines like Photoplay and Movie Mirror.

 

Signed lower left E.S. Moran, this is a tremendously lovely early example by an artist who would go on to become one of the most significant pin-up illustrators of the 20th century.