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- Written by: Ken Furtado
Stephen Barclay was a handsome young man with long, thick and wavy blond hair who posed for at least six paintings by Quaintance, though you won't see his face or form in any of the iconic canvases.
He revealed his existence on Aug. 25, 1979, when he replied by letter to an advertisement in The Advocate. His personal stationery bore the custom crest shown here. Barclay, an interior designer, was living in Los Angeles at the time.
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- Written by: Ken Furtado
I have written about George Quaintance's final, unfinished canvas: Odin Welcoming the Slain Heroes into Valhalla. It was featured on the cover of the Fall 1958 issue of Physique Pictorial.
The model for that canvas has a story that's compelling in its own right. His name was Dick Dubois. For most of the 1950s, you couldn't pick up a physique or bodybuilding magazine without him in it.
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- Written by: Ken Furtado
I'd like to challenge the belief that the chalkware sculpture shown here was created by George Quaintance.
This much is indisputable: In 1936, Quaintance created three sets of male-female faces that were cast in hydro-stone and marketed and sold by The House of Shaw in New York City. They are The Kiss, Wind Blown, and Sea Breeze. He added a fourth set of separate faces in 1939, calling them We Modern. Collectively, he called them masques. There's a full-page publicity flyer in which they are pictured and described in detail. You can see that flyer here.
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- Written by: Ken Furtado
This is an over-simplification, but when George died in 1957, he bequeathed his estate, both business and personal, to his longtime friends and business partners, Tom Syphers and Victor Garcia. The will is a matter of record. Tom died in 1964, and either he did not leave a will (I have been unable to find one) or he left a will that was not probated, but privately executed. Thus, his half of the estate goes into legal limbo.
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- Written by: Ken Furtado
Christopher Clark is a tough guy to pin down, and the commonness of both his given name and his surname turn Internet searches into gargantuan tasks with few rewards.
Clark was a contemporary of Quaintance and, like Quaintance, his early career was spent in part painting portraits of prominent social figures. A Florida native, Clark was born in 1903. I was not able to find a date of death.
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- Written by: Ken Furtado
I get asked this question frequently. Conventional wisdom apparently dictates that an original work by Quaintance is "priceless."
To give two examples, consider the infamous "Rita Hayworth." Despite the fact that this full-sized portrait is of a former Los Angeles socialite named Mrs. Milton Stevens (details here), and that I provided incontrovertible proof of this to the owner, it was offered on eBay in 2005 for nearly $2 million.