Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
Stanley Borack created this striking, evocative and finely rendered painting for the cover of the 1954 Dell Books paperback Silver Doll by Blair Treynor. A lurid pulp fiction page turner set in Sin City; the back cover slug advertises “the story of a man in the rackets; of the doll who wanted to keep him there, and the woman […]
Artist: Stanley Borack
This oil on board painting by Samson Pollen was created as cover art for the 1955 paperback Mambo To Murder, one half of the double sided Ace Double Novel D-109. Private eye Joe Moran, who had his license revoked for extracting “two fisted justice” is shown in a bleak urban hotel room lit by an outside […]
Artist: Samson Pollen
Tom Lovell created this colorful and expertly rendered painting to illustrate “Son of The Coach” an interior story for the October 14, 1950 issue of Collier’s Magazine. A copy of the magazine is included in the sale. The scene captures a brunette co-ed turning away in sadness from the ongoing marching band celebration in the background, as the son of […]
Artist: Tom Lovell
On offer is a classic cheesecake pin up painting featuring a decidedly sexy bed-headed platinum blonde ala Marilyn Monroe by the prolific American pin-up artist Bill Randall. Bill Randall is best remembered for his wildly popular spiral bound “Randall’s Date Book” 12 page calendars for The Kemper-Thomas Calendar Company. He also created a series of works in […]
Artist: Bill Randall
In this original oil on canvas pulp painting by Harold McCauley, used as the cover for the November, 1954 pulp digest, Imaginative Tales #2, a near nude runaway pin-up girl seductively rides a speeding red bullet – with the next stop being the moon… Created to illustrate an interior serialized novella story by Charles F. […]
Artist: Harold McCauley
This trio of images by Thornton Utz was created to illustrate a single story in the flagship Curtis Publishing magazine The Saturday Evening Post. With a bold mid-century modern aesthetic and the dry brush gouache technique popular in glossy magazines in the 1950s, the set presents an enticing take on American femininity as idealized during the Cold […]
Artist: Thornton Utz
A large and technically adept colorful gouache illustration painting by Mario Cooper for an interior story titled “Secret Voice of The Desert Oracle“, which appeared in the August 13, 1950 edition of Randolph Hearst’s American Weekly Magazine. An over the top Egyptian themed costumed processional, which appeared in print with the following caption: “Cleopatra Probably […]
Artist: Mario Cooper
A jovial, large format oil painting by Harold H.W. McCauley which appeared as the May 1955 cover of Imaginative Tales, a Greenleaf Publishing title. The image is a whimsical self-portrait, the artist appears as the 1950s everyman enjoying a night on the town after a hard day’s work. His wife sits atop his shoulders–a classic “Mac girl” pin-up bombshell getting […]
Artist: Harold McCauley
An evocative pin-up girl pulp cover watercolor painting by Malcolm Smith for the May, 1953 issue of Fate Magazine – True Stories Of The Strange And The Unknown. This was created to illustrate the interior story “Do You Hear Colors?” On the printed cover there were black musical notes applied, (likely on a separate transparency […]
Artist: Malcolm Smith
This tawdry and seductive original artwork was illustrated for use as the cover of the 1951 Cameo Books title The Loves of Alice Brandt, part of the publisher’s “love fiction” line. Cameo was an imprint of Detective House Publishers in New York which was a major producer of digest sized pulp novels during the period when this first appeared […]
Artist: Unidentified American Illustrator
