Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
An odd interior illustration by the prolific American illustrator Fredric Varady, this large scale painting accompanied a story titled “The Payoff” on page 45 of the April 1950 issue of an as-of-yet unidentified mainstream American magazine. This classic depiction of post-WWII co-eds takes the buttoned up wholesome style of Cold War Americana to an almost surreal extreme. The scene shows emotions […]
Artist: Fredric Varady
A captivating, sexy, toasting blonde pastel by noted illustrator and occasional pin-up artist Victor Tchetchet. This pin-up is unusual as it mimics the Coles Phillip’s “Fadeaway Girls” technique where the subject fades into the background. Tchetchet is best known for his pin-up, The Favorite Model, and countless movie magazine covers throughout the 1930’s. I have never come across the published version of this pastel, presumably it was done as a pin-up calendar illustration. Beautifully double matted in a $700 gallery frame.
Artist: Victor Tchetchet
A fresh to the market 1950s original pin-up oil painting that is attributed to Ben-Hur Baz, with custom advertising for Krome-Oil Piston Rings. A busty blonde bombshell ala Marilyn Monroe is shown seductively posed in a new and very revealing bikini that highlights the tan lines left from her past, more modest swimwear. A recent gallery acquisition from […]
Artist: Ben-Hur Baz
This original oil on canvas painting, used as the cover for the January 1955 pulp digest, Imaginative Tales #3, shows a Vaudeville era magician and his pin-up girl assistant working a crowd and casting spells and presumably making things disappear. This was created to illustrate the interior story by Robert Bloch, titled Black Magic Holiday, […]
Artist: Harold McCauley
This original oil on canvas painting, used as the cover for the January 1955 pulp digest, Imagination – Stories Of Science And Fantasy, offers a whimsical mid-century futuristic look at the then far-off year of 1990. The 1950s were abundant with delightfully optimistic and utopian visions of what future life would look like – works like […]
Artist: Harold McCauley
Rolf Armstrong created this Western-themed pin-up cowgirl pastel for the Brown & Bigelow Calendar Company in the early 1950s. The adorable Americana image was published as a calendar with the titles Come And Get It!, and Soups On! This original artwork has tremendous electric cobalt blue coloring as the artist captured the last fleeting minutes of light, imagining a dreamy, well-realized, wide […]
Artist: Rolf Armstrong
A fresh to the market, sexy and spirited Gil Elvgren oil painting created in 1952 for The Brown & Bigelow Calendar Company and published under the title Some Help!(Down,Boy). In this view of the model as artist, a curvy brunette in Parisian inspired attire is interrupted in her quest to create her masterpiece by the antics of […]
Artist: Gil Elvgren
A sultry mixed medium paperback cover illustration by Lou Marchetti, this first appeared in 1951 as the paperback cover of Shadow Of The Mafia, aka Horns of the Devil by Louis Malley. The provocative and hard-boiled image shows an “easy loving” blonde beauty flirtatiously eying the streetwise tough Don Alberto, who lays on the bed, his enforcers […]
Artist: Lou Marchetti
An eerie underwater view of two Navy Frogman divers, this gouache cover painting by Ed Lafferty appeared on the cover of the August, 1951 edition of Popular Mechanics. The scene illustrates an interior story that showcases the groundbreaking movie set design work of Louis Witte, Hollywood’s “ace authority on celluloid warfare.” Handsomely matted and […]
Artist: Ed Lafferty
A gorgeous and very detailed framed preliminary graphite sketch by the legendary American pin-up artist Gil Elvgren, which was used in the making of the 1955 Brown & Bigelow calendar “Waiting For You”. As part of his process, Elvgren would pose a live model in his home studio and create a series of graphite sketches […]
Artist: Gil Elvgren
