Heritage to Offer Rare St. John Pulp Cover

DALLAS, TEXAS: Heritage Comics Auctions (HCA) has acquired for consignment a rare original oil painting by J. Allen St. John, which was used for the cover of Mystic #1, published in 1953.

The piece will be offered in Heritage's October 10-13 Signature auction at the Dallas Comicon. It is described as follows:

All connoisseurs of adventure and fantasy know the work of J. Allen St. John. Considered the ultimate Tarzan artist due to his breathtaking series of covers and interior illustrations for the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, most major oils painted by St. John are owned by private institutions or locked away in private collections of the highest quality. In fact, a major St. John oil has not been up for auction in many years, making this a rare find indeed. Exhibiting all the qualities that made St. John world-famous, the composition is wonderfully colorful and dynamic and features that incredible sense of anatomy that characterizes St. John's best works. The brushwork is lush and loose and rich, indicating a very painterly approach; he does not want to deaden the piece with tightness. Like the example presented here, St. John's best oils carry the viewer away on flights of the imagination. A romantic dreaminess and ethereal beauty flows off his canvas. The image area is approximately 16" x 20" and it is tastefully framed to an overall size of 20" x 24". Signed in full in the upper left corner. Excellent condition. A rare opportunity to acquire a masterwork from one of the field's most enduring names. A copy of Mystic #1, the actual pulp for which this piece was painted, is included with this lot.

The painting is conservatively estimated to fetch a minimum of $20,000 or more.

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