Moonlight and Roses
Moonlight and Roses – Miss Sinclair 1965 Calendar Illustration c1963 by American Painter Gil Elvgren (1914 – 1980); pin-up girl and advertising artist, and illustrator.
Moonlight and Roses is a stunning and striking illustration of Miss Sinclair, the sophisticated and elegant pinup girl for the 1965 calendar that was painted in 1963.
It is a dark blue starlit night as a beautiful young lady sits on a column balcony with her right leg hanging over her left with her hands clasped over her right knee as she clutches two red roses wearing a beautiful white wedding dress.
She is also wearing gold multi-layered ball earrings, a gold and silver bracelet and silver open toed laced evening shoes.
In the background we see some rose bushes, trees and a possible mountainscape in the far distance.
This is a retouched digital art old masters reproduction of a public domain image.
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.
