Pin-Up & Glamour Art

Risqué and fetching maidens have always been popular artistic subjects and the perfect vehicle to advertise just about any product, add allure to any magazine, or brighten any calendar. In the 1930s, Rolf Armstrong and Billy Devorss’s Art Deco sophisticates were everyone’s dream girl. During World War II, George Petty and Alberto Vargas created patriotic lithe modernist heartbreakers for the pages of Esquire Magazine to keep servicemen company, and soon there was a calendar girl for every taste--whether you preferred the girl next door or the one from the wrong side of the tracks. In post-war America, the youthful spirit personified by Earl Moran’s cheesecake depictions of Marilyn Monroe reigned, and pin up and glamour art remained unflaggingly popular. Today, original pin up and glamour art is more coveted by collectors than ever, and its influence on contemporary fashion, art, and culture is everywhere.

This original Old Gold Cigarettes commissioned advertising painting appeared in print in 1939 under the title “Wa-Ta-Hun-Ee!”. That year George Petty created a full years worth of Old Gold Petty girls for the ad agency Lennen & Mitchell, creating continued interest in the Old Gold Brand with the monthly appearance of his deliriously successful pin-up creations. In the scene, a sexy Indian Maiden takes aim with quiver and bow in what has surely become one of the more iconic works by this great artist and illustrator.

Wa-Ta-Hun-Ee!

Artist: George Petty

This Pierrot-inspired flapper girl pastel was created by Henry Clive as cover art for a Hollywood Comedy Club burlesque program. With a mischevious glint in her eye, the smiling blond embodies the devil-may-care ethos of the early jazz age. After moving to California to work in silent films, Clive was very much a part of the Hollywood social scene. This original pastel is an early example of his fraternal pursuits, and includes a faint dedication to a fellow member of the Hollywood Comedy Club for which this was created.

Hollywood Comedy Club

Artist: Henry Clive

An original Gil Elvgren pin-up oil painting created in 1952 for the Brown & Bigelow Calendar Company of Saint Paul Minnesota. This curvy pin-up beauty appeared under the title “Hard To Suit,” a pun the copy department liked so much they used it again in 1954 to describe an Elvgren girl disrobing from her duck hunting garb to reveal lingerie. This is the prototypical Elvgren girl in a comically harrowing and skin revealing pin-up entanglement with the artist’s classic pursed lip expression that evokes surprise, embarrassment and provocation.

Hard To Suit (Who Me?)

Artist: Gil Elvgren

This fresh to the market large pastel pin-up illustration by Zoe Mozert was commissioned for the Brown & Bigelow Calendar Company and used in their 1950 line under the title “Ready To Serve”. Work is nicely lined and beautifully framed and in pristine original untouched condition with a large Brown & Bigelow published Calendar of artwork included in sale.

Ready To Serve

Artist: Zoe Mozert

An original pastel sketch of an aquatically themed pin-up girl in a sailors cap by the prolific American pin-up artist Earl Steffa Moran. This is not a finished calendar pastel it was either a preliminary sketch for his 1941 Brown & Bigelow Calendar “I’ll be Seeing You” or was a presentation drawing given as a gift to a fan, friend or family member. This is 100% guaranteed to be an original pastel by Earl Moran; it is signed in the lower left corner and there is a verso note in the artist’s hand as seen on the back of the frame. Beautifully matted and framed behind glass and ready to enjoy.

Earl Moran Sailor Girl Sketch

Artist: Earl Moran

In an unusual blonde hatted view by George Hurrell, Joan Crawford is captured in her most captivating glory by the master of Hollywood photography George Hurrell. In a gentle sepia on a large format double weight semi-gloss paperstock, Hurrell captures the beauty of the young Joan Crawford, with her effortless art deco style, and emboldened flapper sensibility. This is blindstamped by Hurrell lower right, and inkstamped on verso.

Pre-Code Joan Crawford

Artist: George Hurrell

In a glamorous wide-brimmed hat, Joan Crawford displays the smoldering intense gaze that was to become her trademark in this image by the incomparable George Hurrell. This double weight gallery still is the personality portrait at its finest, on a high end double weight photostock, and never intended for public distribution. A pre-code form of glamorous sophistication the likes of with Hollywood rarely saw.

A Hatted Joan Crawford

Artist: George Hurrell

This impactful and eye-catching original pin up oil-on-board by Gil Elvgren was created for a roadside billboard. A pretty blond Elvgren girl who has just stepped out of a swimming pool enjoys a long tall cool one in this classic good-girl example of breweriana advertising art. Painting comes with the original posed double weight photograph of the model taken by Elvgren, and is pictured on page 237 of the monograph “Gil Elvgren All His Glamorous American Pin-ups” (plate 582), written by Charles Martignette and Louis K. Meisel.

A Cool One

Artist: Gil Elvgren

In 1917, Theda Bara was the biggest draw for Fox studios, and a movie star whose popularity was surpassed only by Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. In this photograph by Albert Witzel, hand colored and printed she is seen posed in an early iteration of her Cleopatra headdress, with flowing deep black hair. Inscribed to Tom Mix, the cowboy superstar, who in 1917 had just joined Bara as a headlining performer for Fox studios, this came from Mix’s collection.

Theda Bara as Cleopatra

Artist: Albert Witzel

Art Frahm pushes the boundaries of cheesecake pin-up in this scandalous and daring oil on canvas. Titled “Oooh, Is There a Man in the House?” this late 1940s Goes Litho calendar commissioned pin-up painting features a brunette in shockingly sheer negligee peeking around the corner in a brazen mix of apprehension and curiosity. This winsome brunette exhudes a level of erotic sophistication not always seen in the post-World War II pin up world.

Oooh, Is There a Man In the House?

Artist: Art Frahm

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