Good luck trying to buy a painting by “the Norman Rockwell of cheesecake”. Recently, at an auction in Beverly Hills, one of Elvgren’s paintings (Skirting the Issue) sold for $176,500. Good thing PinUp Works owns the rights to “Splendid View”, a nautical themed Elvgren original featuring a voluptuous red head “looking” through a telescope. “Splendid View” was painted by Elvgren in 1962 and converted to sculpture in 2014 by Jack Stockton. They retail for $99. A small price to pay for a beautiful piece of American history.
In 1937, Gil began painting calendar pin-ups for Louis F. Dow, one of America’s leading publishing companies, during which time he created about 60 works on 28″ X 22″ canvas and distinguished them by a printed signature. Many of his pin-ups were reproduced as nose art on military aircraft during World War II. Around 1944, Gil was approached by Brown and Bigelow, a firm that still dominates the field in producing calendars and advertising specialties. He was associated with Brown & Bigelow from 1945 to 1972.[5] At Brown & Bigelow Elvgren began working with 30″ X 24″canvases, a format that he would use for the next 30 years, and signed his work in cursive.
Gil Elvgren felt that his models were the key to the strength of his paintings, and he had an exquisite eye in choosing the correct women for his projects. Many of his models, like Myrna Hansen, Myrna Loy, Donna Reed, Arlene Dahl, Barbara Hale, and Kim Novak, went on to have successful film careers after posing for the artist. These actresses, just beginning their careers, would travel to the offices of the nation’s most successful calendar company, Brown & Bigelow, to be immortalized by the pin-up artists in their employ, and among those, Gil Elvgren knew best how to tap into the young women’s “freshness and spontaneity”.
“Splendid View” is a limted edition production. It stands approximately 9 1/2 inches tall. Width ranges between 4-7 inches. Cast in multiple pieces to achieve greatest detail possible using high grade, fracture resistant poly resin and assembled into two pieces. Each sculpture is painstakingly hand painted.. Click here for more details
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