An American Beauty
An American Beauty Illustration by American Painter Gil Elvgren (1914 – 1980); pin-up girl and advertising artist, and illustrator.
An American Beauty is sexy sensuous nude pinup girl illustration by Elvgren that was used as the calendar art illustration in 1949.
It depicts a beautiful sexy blonde in her birthday suit sitting on a red bed with a black negligee around her back that she is holding in both her hands as she looks off to her left.
She is illuminated with a warm light that also lightens the bed and the green wall behind her.
This is a retouched digital art old masters reproduction of a public domain image that is available as a metal print online.
Info Below Derived From Wikipedia.org
Gillette A. Elvgren was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and attended University High School. After graduation, he began studying art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
He later moved to Chicago to study at the American Academy of Art, and graduated from the Academy during the great depression, at the age of twenty-two.
After graduation Elvgren joined the stable of artists at Stevens and Gross, Chicago’s most prestigious advertising agency, and became a protégé of the artist Haddon Sundblom.
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 pin-up girl works on 22″ × 28″ 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; and it was around this time in 1944, that Elvgren was approached by the Brown and Bigelow Publishing Company; a firm that still dominates the field in producing calendars, advertising specialties and promotional merchandise.
The next year from 1945 until 1972, Elvgren was associated with the Brown & Bigelow publishing company, and began working with 24 inch by 30 inch canvases, a format that he would use for the next 30 years, and signed his work in cursive.
Elvgren was a commercial success. He lived in various locations, and was active from the 1930s to the 1970s. In 1951 he began painting in a studio in his home, then in Winnetka, Illinois, using an assistant to set up lighting, build props and scenes, photograph sets, and prepare his paints.
His clients included well known companies like Brown and Bigelow, Coca-Cola, General Electric and the Sealy Mattress Company, to name a few. In addition, during the 1940s and 1950s he illustrated stories for a host of magazines, such as The Saturday Evening Post and Good Housekeeping.
Among the models and hollywood legends Elvgren painted during his career included Myrna Hansen, Donna Reed, Barbara Hale, Arlene Dahl, Lola Albright and Kim Novak.
