I have a new girl in my appartment. She's tall. So tall that I cannot suspend her on my walls. She is a painting. The second one of my new collection of original US pin-up paintings. Betty is a gorgeous redhead, and her creator is Earl Moran. He was one of the very best masters of pin-up in the 40's and 50's. His work was mainly published as calendars, or in early Playboy and other sleazy magazines "for men".

The most famous Moran pin-up was a painting of a young unknown starlet called Norma Jean Dougherty, as a "Spanish Girl". She posed several times for him. A few years later, she would become Marilyn Monroe. This painting is actually for sale at the Grapefruit Moon Gallery.

Moran pin-up from his golden age were mainly made in pastel. They generally didn't have any background. You can find many galleries on the web, like here and here, here, here, here, here, and here, and in many other places.

Sometimes, Moran painted in a little bit different style. Not "pure" pin-up with flashy colors amd big smiles, who have this naive and fresh feeling of innocence, but paintings maybe more classical, almost academic, somber, deep, dark, with a beautiful use of dramatically contrasted lights, often with a black background, like this one:

He continued to paint beautiful women in the 60's and the 70's, but his work got less attention, probably because calendars and magazines started to use photography instead of painting (what a pity!). My painting is from the 60's. I call her Betty because the model's name was Betty Rae. She was blonde, but he changed her hair color to red on my painting. I'm not complaining! He painted her several times, a serie of similar poses using oil on board, all extremely nice.

Here is my Betty. I love her:

And here are three other paintings of Betty from probably the same serie, that I found around the web and at the Grand Illusion Gallery. Check their website. LeRoy was a personal friend of Earl Moran, and not only he has original art and beautiful prints and photos for sale, but also he's one of the authorities on this pin-up master: