George Quaintance: A pioneer of male physique painting (6 of 6)

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1940-1951 (1 of 6)

1952 (2 of 6)

1953 (3 of 6)

1954-1956 (4 of 6)

1957 (5 of 6)

Afterword (6 of 6)

Quaintance's legacy includes the 60-plus signature oil paintings now held in private collections and a few gay-oriented museum collections around the world. He also produced thousands of art prints, photographs, sculptures, and other original designs, including glamorized life masks of twentieth-century icons such as Marlene Dietrich. These ephemera have largely disappeared, with only a cache of salvaged prints and photographs surfacing here and there. Occasionally, a painting will pop up at public auction or prints will be offered at eBay and other online sites.


Model Eugene Dubuque, Mr New York City of 1946, 1947


Model Alan Stephan, 1946


Model A. Ferrero, 1947


Model Clarence Ross, 1947


Model Dan Lurie, 1947


Model Eric Pedersen, 1947


Model Everett Sinderoff, 1947


Model Joseph E. Weider, 1947


Model John Farbotnick, Mr. Chicago of 1946, 1947


Model Steve Reeves, 1947


Model Victor Nicoletti, 1947

Quaintance's work was prominently featured in the American physique magazines that flowered in the wake of Bob Mizer's Physique Pictorial, including Grecian Guild Pictorial, Adonis, Olympic Arts, Demigods, Vim, and Young Physique.

All of these were thinly-disguised homoerotic publications aimed at gay men, a potentially lucrative but dangerous market. To avoid anti-gay and anti-porn laws, these magazines assumed the lofty ideal of male health and physical development.

Quaintance had added photography to his list of accomplishments, gaining lessons and experience from such well-known New York photographers as Edwin Townsend and Lon Hanagan (Lon of New York, 1911-1999). The latter became a pioneer of the "beefcake" school of photography whose models in the 1940s included male physique icon and dancer Tony Sansone and Quaintance's own well-muscled lover, Garcia.

In a 1996 interview for Torso Magazine, Lon reported that to make his male nudes suitable for his first photography catalogue in 1941, he called upon "the touch of groundbreaking gay painter George Quaintance, a friend and neighbor of Lon's who would pop over and paint luminous (fig) leaves directly on Lon's prints" to cover the models' genitals. (John D. Waybright)

Quaintance, the first major biography of George Quaintance, by John Waybright and Ken Furtado, is due to published soon.

Source:
http://www.glbtq.com/arts/quaintance_g.html (Biography)
http://www.homoerotimuseum.net/ame/ame02/330.html (Images)

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