Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
This underworld, barroom image shows a head-turning femme fatale with the sort of bad-girl good looks that spell bad luck, this pulp fiction paperback cover painting was deftly painted by Harry Barton in 1955 for the cover of the Ace Double Novel The Squeeze. As the tag line announces this unlucky redhead…”Played With Death To Get The Man She […]
Artist: Harry Barton
In a classic, provocative, and lurid confrontation, Harry Barton shows a fiery redheaded femme-fatale struggling with Joe Chicago, the square-jawed, prizefighting hero of Ross Laurence’s 1953 mobster crime novel The Fast Buck. First published as a part of the Ace Double Novels series, this is a classic example of danger and drama, with provocative undertones, from the down […]
Artist: Harry Barton
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
A dramatic and suspenseful cover paperback painting by the prolific American Illustrator Harry Barton, where train tracks take on an ominous aura, and a deadly outcome appears likely. The cover of an early Ace Double Novel paperback titled Fear No More, written by Leslie Edgley. Illustration is nicely framed and matted behind glass and a […]
Artist: Harry Barton
Grapefruit Moon Gallery is delighted to offer the original 1941 lurid gouache painting by Bill Fleming which appeared as the cover for the early Dell Vest Pocket Paperback book Marihuana, written by Cornell Woolrich under the pen name of William Irish. The cover slug says it all- “A Cheap and evil girl sets a hopped […]
Artist: Bill Fleming
This dramatic and lurid oil painting was created by Rudy Nappi as the original cover for the now-infamous Jane Manning novel Reefer Girl, published by Detective House in New York under the Cameo Books imprint in 1953. The cover slug describes the work as “The frank, biting story of a young girl of the slums, and […]
Artist: Rudy Nappi
Dating to 1950, this dazzling colorful original paperback cover was painted by George Gross for Quarter Books #57, The Virgin And The Barfly. Illustrating a scene from the novel by Gerald Foster (one of many likely pseudonyms of the prolific Peggy Gladdis), this is a splashy, trashy, and altogether irresistible example of sleaze paperback […]
Artist: George Gross
A wildly erotic and revealed pin-up girl cover painting by the well regarded and prolific American illustrator and cover artist Paul Rader, for the 1960 Midwood Book titled “The Blonde”. Part of what is today considered the golden age of lesbian pulp fiction, “The Blonde” tells the story of a tormented working girl who finds […]
Artist: Paul Rader
A lurid and prototypically noir paperback cover painting by the prolific American artist and illustrator Victor Olson, for the 1965 Midwood Book title Down And Out. Written by Les Masters – a well proportioned young housewife gets herself in financial hot water unbeknownst to her husband, she has to sell her valor to this snarky […]
Artist: Victor Olson
A lustful, original cover painting by Rudy Nappi for the 1959 Tower paperback cover titled A Strange Kind of Love, by Lawrence Block, written under his early pseudonym Sheldon Lord. Billed as a “daring tale of the love life of a writer and his most unusual mistress,” Block has described the story as that of […]
Artist: Rudy Nappi
