Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
This 1949 Brown & Bigelow Calendar Company commissioned pin-up pastel is one of the finest examples by Earl Moran we have encountered. A redheaded heart-breaker on a then state of the art mid-century modern phone asks the viewer and the caller to “Remember Me?” in a classic pin-up entanglement loaded with double entendre. Earl Moran was a master of light and shadow and this large and commanding artwork is a monument to his talent.
Artist: Earl Moran
This 1948 Brown & Bigelow Calendar Company commissioned pastel by Earl Moran is a large and defining example of American pin up. A pretty blonde pin-up girl is posed on a mid-century modern Heywood Wakefield office desk with a phone in one hand. The title “Call Again” is a witty take on an office secretary and her private hours. Condition is pristine in a custom made lined gallery frame with fitted corners behind ultraviolet glass. A 1948 Brown & Bigelow advertising calendar of the image is included with sale.
Artist: Earl Moran
This delicately rendered, original, signed Pearl Frush pin-up illustration was published by the Gerlach-Barklow Calendar Company under the title “Miss Bermuda.” The nearly photo-realist watercolor appeared as part of a 1947 “Aqua Tour” series of bathing beauty images. Pearl Frush was a prolific and talented female artist who was active during the 1940s and 50s and worked […]
Artist: Pearl Frush
The Louis F. Dow Calendar Company of Saint Paul, Minnesota commissioned this pristine and rare surviving pin-up painting by Art Frahm for publication in their 1944 calendar line under the title “Pay Off.” The image shows an underdressed, impish redhead having an “oops” moment as she is drenched by the puppy she has just so carefully bathed. This painting is […]
Artist: Art Frahm
A lurid, true crime themed, spicy pulp cover pin-up painting by George Gross featuring a bathing beauty, gun toting moll as “The Daughter of Satan,” for the March, 1948 pulp digest title Women in Crime which purported to have stories based on True Fact Detective Cases. The tagline on the cover reads “Some Women Love To […]
Artist: George Gross
This breezy sailor girl, bathing beauty pin-up graced the cover of the July 24, 1937 edition of Liberty magazine, a popular long running Bernarr MacFadden publication. By the artist R.C. Kauffmann–a personal favorite of the gallery–this is a tremendously spirited, large format oil painting with spectacular zest and allure. Kauffmann is best remembered for his Saturday Evening Post covers as […]
Artist: R.C. Kauffmann
A curvy nude pin-up beauty in a red wide brimmed mid-century hat contently admires her reflection in this original pin-up painting by Harry Ekman. This was previously part of the collection of pin-up historian and author Charles Martignette and appears in the 1996 Taschen volume The Great American Pin-Up (page 153, plate #326) co-authored by Martignette and Louis K. […]
Artist: Harry Ekman
A 1949 Western Americana cowgirl themed gouache on illustration board which comes directly from the archives of the 100-year-old San Francisco ad agency/lithography company “Stecher-Traung & Schmidt.” The work is in the style of George Petty, and Ben-Hur Baz. Among other noted artists Stecher-Traug employed Gil Elvgren, E.B. Segner & Mary Mayo. This commissioned illustration is dated and inkstamped in the lower corner but is unsigned. Work is beautifully framed and matted in a period ornate gesso frame.
Artist: Unknown
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
