Above: The artist’s signature

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.”

Above: Text on verso with presentation date and names

Above: Dedication on verso of work by artist

Above: Fred Craft cover design for “Black Mask” pulp

Above: Tattle Tales Spicy Pulp Nude exotic cover of the era ” Zanzibar” by Enoch Bolles