Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
This striking and tense dramatic painting by Norman Saunders was created as cover art for the the October, 1950 issue of the pulp magazine 15 Story Detective; a Popular Publications title. The scene is a classic example of menace art – a heroic uniformed pretty blonde WAC soldier attempts to disarm a poison wielding femme fatale in an airplane hangar, unaware […]
Artist: Norman Saunders
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
Futuristic, detailed, and very precise, this science-fiction inspired imagination of cosmos exploration was created in 1963 as the cover of the British magazine Understanding Science #71, a Sampson Low Publication. Geared to the high school audience, and part of the ongoing space race effort to get youths interested in science during the Cold War, the image dramatizes astronomy by […]
Artist: Unknown British Illustrator
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
For nearly three decades the inimitable Enoch Bolles was the sole cover artist for Film Fun magazine, creating larger than life and uniquely erotic pin up creations that bridged the gap between the traditional calendar girl and pulp magazine femme-fatales. In this example, which graced the cover of the June 1940 issue, a streamlined […]
Artist: Enoch Bolles
This woman in peril, menace themed proposed spicy pulp oil painting by the American illustrator William Soare is a lurid and provocative example of the damsel in distress imagery which proliferated newsstands in the 1930s. To the best of our research, this pulp cover illustration appears to have never been published, which sometimes happened when the fly-by-night titles that commissioned these spicy […]
Artist: William Soare
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 oil on canvasboard painting by Harold (H.W.) McCauley was created for use as the cover for the 1959 Nightstand digest pulp novel Carnival of Lust by J.X. Williams. In this offering a near-nude harem girl flirtatiously eyes a martini drinking genie. The painting is a dynamic and well-rendered example by this prolific and gifted American illustrator, and a great artifact […]
Artist: Harold McCauley
In this moody yet nostalgic casein-on-board illustration painting, the artist John Berkey, best remembered today as one of the leading figures of the golden era of science fiction, shows his versatility. Most identified with his posters for the original Star Wars film, Berkey was a technically brilliant commercial illustrator and his vision is what we see in our […]
Artist: John Berkey
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
