HADDON HUBBARD SUNDBLOM (American, 1899-1976). Naughty Santa, Playboy cover, December 1972. Oil on canvas. 27 x 21 in.. ...

Description

HADDON HUBBARD SUNDBLOM (American, 1899-1976)
Naughty Santa, Playboy cover, December 1972
Oil on canvas
27 x 21 in.
Signed lower left

Playboy has only used around a half dozen fully painted covers (discounting the Bea Paul collages and Bunny Logos) rather than photographs, and this painting is the most important of those. It is by one of the originators of the pin-up genre, Haddon Sundblom, the artist in whose studio many of the best pin-up artists learned their craft, including Gil Elvgren, Al Buell, and Joyce Ballantyne amongst others; it is a Santa girl by the artist who defined the image of the modern Santa Claus in his series of ads for Coca Cola; it is one of the very few Pin-Ups by this master of Illustration art; and this painting has been noted as the artist's last assignment before his death in 1976 (as detailed in The Great American Pin-Up by Charles G. Martignette and Louis K. Meisel, Taschen, 1996).

From the Collection of Craig Macmillan.



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