Above: Detail

Above: The artist’s signature lower left

A kinetic art deco era flapper girl bathing beauty is captured frolicking in the waves in this original oil on canvas pin up painting by William Soare. Likely created for a pin up calendar, the work is signed lower left and also marked on the back canvas in the artists hand. William Fulton Soare was a versatile illustrator who was prolific during the 1920s – 30s creating covers for many pulp magazines titles and Boy’s Adventure Magazines. His first assignments were illustrations for calendar reproduction.

Above: Verso view of old canvas and pine stretchers with artist’s writing on back

Above: Detail

Bio courtesy of David Saunders :

William Fulton Soare was born 1896 in Hackensack, New Jersey. After finishing high school in Hackensack, he and his older brother joined the Army to serve in the Great War with the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe. He achieved the rank of Sergeant.

After the war he studied art at the Sorbonne in Paris.

He returned to New York City and studied with Harvey Dunn, and Dean Cornwell at the Grand Central School of Art. In 1927 he opened an art studio at 41 Union Square in New York City.

His first assignments were illustrations for advertisements and calendars.

In 1935 he received an important public commission to paint a series on the history of progress in optics at the Hayden Planetarium for Bausch & Lomb, Inc.

He soon found work painting covers for magazines such as American Boy, Boy’s Life, The Saturday Evening Post, and covers for the magazine section of The Sunday New York Herald Tribune.

He painted freelance pulp covers for Ace-High, Action Stories, Adventure, Complete Novel, Danger Trail, Detective Yarns, Double Action Detective, Horror Stories, Mystery Novels, Short Stories, Spicy Mystery, Spicy Adventure Stories, Star Western, Thrilling Adventures, Top-Notch Western, West, Western Aces, Western Romances, Western Story, Western Trails, and Wild West Stories.

William Fulton Soare died of a heart attack at age 42 on March 1, 1940, while shoveling snow from his sidewalk in expectation of the scheduled arrival of a staff member of The Saturday Evening Post to discuss a cover illustration for an upcoming issue.