Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
The aptly titled Teen-Age Terror shows a lurid, youth gone wild, over the top image of a highly sensationalized girl gang initiation. In this oil-on-masonite cover painting, American illustrator James Alfred Meese captured the moral panic over juvenile delinquency that was a focal point of American culture in the 1950s, most notably explored in films like Rebel Without a […]
Artist: James Alfred Meese
Pulp and paperback artist Edward Mortiz created this femme fatale artwork as the cover of the 1961 Beacon Books title House Party by Dominique Napier.
Artist: Edward Moritz
This cover painting by Tom Beecham for True Strange magazine is comprised of a montage of Marilyn Monroe imagery.
Artist: Tom Beecham
A large format, lurid and iconic paperback cover painting by Verne Tossey that was used as the cover for the 1955 Ace paperback Left Bank Of Desire.
Artist: Verne Tossey
An original oil on board illustration used as the cover for Joker No.16 – a 1949 digest sized magazine advertising “More Snappy Cartoons – Smack Full of Laughter!” A leggy, busty and quintessentially Driben pin-up beauty is seen trying her hand at a little “sofa fission” as the caption will have you know. Illustration is in a fine state of conservation, nicely framed and matted in a period, wide profile, handsome, gesso art deco frame.
Artist: Peter Driben
An original gouache cover illustration for an unidentified issue of the notorious French publication “La Vie Parisienne”. The long running, humorous and racy magazine chronicled the exploits and sexual proclivities of sassy and free spirited French follies showgirls and their often dim witted suitors in risque, breezy, spicy pulp-like fashion. This original gouache painting is nicely double matted in an oval window in a fine antique ornate gesso gold frame behind glass.
Artist: Maurice Milliere
This Orson Lowell scene of a flapper couple ice yachting with the unexpected help of a pierrot deckhand was presumably created as a cover painting for Collier’s magazine.
Artist: Orson Lowell
An inventive and smart C.1930 pastel by frequent Golden Age of Hollywood Movie Magazine cover artist Mila Baine, showing a radiant and stylish Claudette Colbert. Likely a cover for the title Movie Mirror, where Blaine did numerous commissioned covers of Hollywood’s leading ladies in the early 1930s. From the collection of Ken Galente, former owner of Silver Screen Gallery in New York City.
Artist: Mila Baine
A rare surviving cover painting by the prolific and flamboyant artist Henry Clive who worked as an illustrator for Randolph Hearst for nearly three full decades creating covers for The American Weekly. This is one of the very last paintings Clive completed for Hearst, part of a series of pin-up girl cover images depicting “The Girl Who Inspired The Song”.
Artist: Henry Clive
The 1961 cover painting for the Beacon Book title Wild Body was created by an as-of-yet unidentified American artist. This novel by Manning Clay first appeared in digest form in 1953, our gallery also has that earlier cover painting available for sale. This lurid sleaze pulp fiction offering promises a wild ride — with more […]
Artist: Unknown American Artist
