A dark and eerily erotic oil on canvas nude with orientalist slant. The work has a verso dedication by the artist Fred Page Craft dated 1926. An exotic Moorish/East Indian Orientalist Princess depicted as a “spicy pulp” blood boiling enchantress.
Craft worked as cover artist for pulp magazine Black Mask and contributed a cover for Country Gentleman in 1923. This appears to have been created as a cover for an as of yet identified spicy pulp publication. The touching dedication reads in full: “This little half cast might be the finest painting I shall ever paint. It may be as good-maybe not so good-as some I have painted, but none that I shall paint or have painted could be executed with more appreciation for the person, than for this was painted and to whom it is affectionately presented. Fred Craft Christmas 1926.”