Rancho Siesta has cowboys aplenty, horses for them to ride, and all the requisite tack. But the cattle are missing, unless you count the dead bull being dragged out of the arena by a couple of donkeys in Gloria. Where’s the livestock? Or, as Clara Peller might have demanded, “Where’s the beef?!”
Before the Rancho Siesta era and its horses, Quaintance’s animal of choice was the cat, whether wild or domestic. In 1940, Quaintance painted both a tiger and a leopard, the latter of which complemented a jungle-print gown modeled in the August 1945 issue of Beautify Your Figure magazine.
The tiger canvas was offered on eBay in 2005; it sold for $800. The leopard is privately owned and resides in Virginia. Both canvases are 32x24 inches. A different tiger appeared in Jungle Morn, a large (18x25 inches) lithograph that was a companion piece to 1939’s catless Moon Flower.
Rounding out the roster of fearsome felines is a black panther that is menacing the Primitive Man, who is a dead ringer for Quaintance’s Arizona neighbor, Lex Barker, Hollywood’s Tarzan from 1949 to 1953.
As for domestic pussycats, here’s a quartet, all painted before Quaintance put men on his canvases. This was the era in which George was praised as “the originator of the ‘glamour nudes,’ who have all it takes to ‘knock ‘em dead’ from San Diego to Bangor, from Miami to Seattle.”
Regardless of what you think about GQ’s glamour nudes, his housecats are hideous creatures that are more fearsome than the wild cats. Is one of them actually squeezing the breast of its owner?! For counterbalance, here’s a strapping 17-year-old George and his pooch, standing in front of a peach tree at the family home in Virginia.