- Details
- Written by: Ken Furtado
A visitor to this blog recently wrote to ask me about an original Quaintance canvas he owns. He enclosed snapshots. Lo, it was Kanaka Fisherman, but it was a fisherman I have never seen.
Two other versions of Kanaka Fisherman are known. One of them bears a 1940 date and the vertical signature. In it, the man is throwing a net. This painting (center image in photo) belongs to a collector in Los Angeles and it was purchased directly from the Quaintance estate in the 1970s. The canvas orientation is horizontal.
- Details
- Written by: Ken Furtado
Quaintance was his own best promoter, and one of the things he promoted himself as was a muralist. But where are the murals?
There's one for sure: it hangs over the baptismal font at the Stanley, Virginia Baptist Church that his mother attended. Quaintance painted it at her request, with the blessings of the church, and it's there today for all to see. It depicts life-sized figures of John the Baptist holding the hand of Jesus and leading him into the River Jordan. Six male figures are prostrate on the shore, including an anomalous jungle boy wearing a tiny loincloth.
Quaintance was also said to have painted the mural adorning an entire wall of Mae West's boudoir, at her 7,500-square-foot Santa Monica beach house. The residence was considered to be an art deco masterpiece, but the mural was destroyed during remodeling after West sold the property. I have a poor, foreshortened snapshot of the mural. It does not appear to be the work of Quaintance.
- Details
- Written by: Ken Furtado
Quaintance executed many drawings of women — mostly nudes — that were published as lithographs. The smoking woman, clearly a femme fatale, is seldom seen. I have only a photograph of it, so I cannot comment upon the dimensions, color or date. Quaintance's signature appears clearly in the center right, and "William A. Reynolds Jr." appears in ornamental script at the bottom.
- Details
- Written by: Ken Furtado
During Quaintance's lifetime, the U.S. Supreme Court had yet to come up with the Miller Test for obscenity, and nearly anyone who was offended by an image could declare it obscene. It was usually OK to show a male model's buttocks but frontal nudity was a big no-no, as was any suggestion of homoeroticism. Even if a male model wore the ubiquitous posing strap, "excessive genital delineation" could be cause for legal trouble.
Having spent 1947 in jail for using the mail to distribute "obscenity," Physique Pictorial publisher Bob Mizer employed legal advisers to avoid future errors in judgment when deciding what images could be safely published in his hugely popular magazine. Quaintance's imagery and advertising were a mainstay of Physique Pictorial in its early years, but when the painting Morning in the Desert was selected for the cover of the Feb. 1952 issue, there needed to be some changes.
- Details
- Written by: Ken Furtado
The next two lithographs were printed simultaneously: Baths of Ancient Rome and Spartan Soldiers Bathing. These were smaller than the previous pair, with the actual print area measuring 14x11 inches. Only 10 of Quaintance's 54 canvases of the Male Physique period had a horizontal or landscape orientation, and these are two of them.
The black and white photos of these two paintings could never to justice to the subtle reflections in the water and on the tiles surrounding the pools, so this pair of canvases was an excellent choice to become the next two color lithographs.
- Details
- Written by: Ken Furtado
If asked to name Quaintance's masterpiece, most people will choose either Siesta or Preludio. Apparently Quaintance thought so too, because those were the first two canvases of his "Male Physique" period that he chose to reproduce as color lithographs.
He had always sold 8x10 black and white photos of his canvases to a public that had an unquenchable thirst for them — his mailing list was said to number over 10,000 names. Later, acceding to the demand for color reproductions, he began to sell color chromes, or slides, of the paintings. But the lithographs were new territory. They were printed in full color that carefully duplicated the original oils and printed on heavy stock with a 16- by 20-inch print area and ample margins. The selling price was $5. After Preludio was issued as a lithograph, you could purchase both for $8.