• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Recent Additions
  • The Gallery
    • About
    • Browse by Topic
    • eBay
    • Sorry, It’s Sold
  • Guarantee & Policies
    • Guarantee
    • Shipping & Payment
    • Amazon.com Shipping Information
    • eBay Buyer Protection
  • Contact & Social Media
    • E-mail & Phone
    • eBay
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • Twitter

Grapefruit Moon Gallery

Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration

  • Gallery Blog
  • Golden Gallery
  • Fine & Decorative
  • Illustration & Advertising
  • Paperback & Pulp
  • Pin-Up & Glamour
Sorry, It's Sold

Miss 1964

Artist:Pearl Frush
Date:1964
Medium:Pastel on IIllustration Board
Dimensions:Sight Size 22" x 28" Framed 26 1/2" x 32 1/2"
Condition:Mint
Original Use:Calendar Art for The Gerlach-Barklow Calendar Company
Price: S O L D
Above: Full view of pastel calendar girl image
Above: The artist’s signature lower right
Above: Framed in original presentation frame with brass date plate of 1964

This good girl art original pastel exemplifies the beauty and personality which kept pin up and glamour a mainstay of calendar imagery even after illustration began giving way to photography in popularity. This features a fresh faced brunette beauty queen envisioned by the leading female pin-up illustrator Pearl Frush and published by Gerlach-Barklow of Joliet Illinois. It was customary for calendar salesmen to reward premiere advertising accounts with original illustrations as incentive to keep advertising with the firm. This was given to the Robberson Steel Company of Oklahoma City and is in a pristine state of conservation in the original wood frame behind glass.

Above: Detail
Above: Brass frame plate detail
Above: Frame profile and corner detail

As one of the top three female pin-up artists in the calendar art market at mid-century, Pearl Frush readily commanded the respect of the art directors, publishers, sales managers, and printers with whom she worked.

Frush was born in Iowa and moved to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi as a child. She began drawing as soon as she could hold; when she was ready for formal studies, she enrolled in art instruction courses in New Orleans. After additional training in Philadelphia and New York, Frush joined her family in Chicago, where she studied at the Chicago Art Institute under Charles Schroeder.

Frush opened her first studio in Chicago in the early 1940s. While she accepted freelance jobs, she also worked at the studio of Haddon Sundblom, Johnston, and White. By 1943, she had become one of the Gerlach-Barklow Calendar Company’s most important artists, creating a string of popular series: Liberty Belles, Sweethearts of Sports, Girls of Glamour and Glamour Round the Clock. In 1947, her Aquatour series, a dozen pin-ups all located in aquatic settings, broke all sales records. By 1955, Frush had become a “hot property” in the calendar-publishing business, so it was only natural that Brown & Bigelow should seek her out. A year later, the firm published its first Frush pin-up.

Her girls were wholesome and fresh, shapely but never overtly sexual. Somehow they were able to look both like movie stars and like the girls-next-door.

She sometimes signed her paintings with her married name “Mann”. Her renderings were always done with great precision, capturing every nuance of a subject in an almost photo-realist technique.

Miss 1964

Artist: Pearl Frush
Price:  S O L D

Filed Under: Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1960s, american, Gerlach-Barklow Calendar Company, good girl art, original calendar art, Pearl Frush, pin up
Added to Gallery: September 20, 2011

 

Contact Grapefruit Moon Gallery



    Primary Sidebar

    Join our mailing list

    Grapefruit Moon Gallery Around the Web

    Facebook
    Instagram
    Pinterest
    Twitter

    Recent Additions

    Nude at Teatime

    Jewel Flowers (With My Fondest)

    Two on a Match

    Footer

    About Grapefruit Moon Gallery

    Grapefruit Moon Gallery, based in Minneapolis MN, specializes in vintage pin up and original illustration art.  We are the proud home of the Bunny Yeager archives.

    Since 2003, Grapefruit Moon Gallery has been a leading dealer of exclusive original paintings by Gil Elvgren, Alberto Vargas, Earl Moran, Rolf Armstrong and Henry Clive, as well as vintage photographs, prints, and period decorative arts in ceramic and metal.

    All artworks featured are original, accurately represented, and guaranteed to be the work of the named artist.

    Interested buyers may view pieces by appointment and we are happy to answer any questions you may have. [Contact Us]

    Grapefruit Moon Gallery on eBay

     

    Grapefruit Moon Gallery on Instagram

    View on Instagram

    Copyright © 2023