Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
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
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
An intoxicating and erotic reclining nude by the well-listed artist Harold Mott-Smith. Born in Hawaii, Harold Mott-Smith was a painter who lived in Paris from 1894-1906. He studied at the Academie Julian with Jean Paul Laurens, and exhibited in 1894 with the Boston Art Club as well as Paris Salon. After returning to New York, Mott-Smith worked for GE, illustrating calendars and painting portraits of Thomas Edison. This captivating oil on canvas dates from his early Hawaiian career and showcases his sensuous style.
Artist: Harold Mott-Smith
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
In this large, dramatic and darkly twisted oil on canvas, Fred Pfeiffer perfectly captures the menace and seduction associated with the post-hippie /post Manson family druggie scene, as depicted in counter-culture books and films which proliferated in the 1970s. The work appeared as the cover for the 1975 Bantam paperback The Fear Dealers, written by Jack W. Thomas, who specialized in these […]
Artist: Fred Pfeiffer
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
A large, dazzling, spicy pulp, science fiction, space girl painting by Gabriel Mayorga, which appeared on the cover of the second issue of Super Science Stories in May, 1940. Very loosely illustrating the interior story “Juice” by L. Sprague De Camp, whose slug is worth repeating here in full… They discovered a new game in Lunar Center – a form of ping-pong, […]
Artist: Gabriel Mayorga
A pristine and important surviving Henry Clive illustration painting that appeared as the cover for the July 16, 1933 edition of The American Weekly, a Randolph Hearst publication. The magazine often commissioned Clive to create serialized images of enchantresses that shared a thematic thread. In this case, exotic maidens in the crossfire of cupid’s bow. Our […]
Artist: Henry Clive
