Margaret Hedda (Johnson) Brundage - Artist Info

About Margaret Hedda (Johnson) Brundage

  • Biography from the Archives of askART

    Margaret Hedda (Johnson) Brundage biographical photo
    An illustration artist, especially known for sensual, beautiful, and ever-molested nude female figures, Margaret Brundage was a housewife in Chicago, whose illustration work first appeared in 1932 on the cover of the pulp fiction Weird Tales. "Her name is now virtually synonymous with that of the magazine in the minds of readers and admirers all over the world" (108). One of the readers referred to "the Brundage beauties, an all their curvy clarity! (111).

    One of her covers, The Eyrie, had more fan mail response than any other piece. She was the first of the pulp artists to depict torture, something she did in a whipping scene for a story titled The Slithering Shadow by Robert E Howard. Her most accomplished piece of this kind for Weird Tales is generally thought to be Tiger Cat.

    Brundage had trained as a fashion artist at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, but she switched to popular illustration during the Depression when she had to support a young child and elderly mother. She completed her final pictures on canvas with pastel chalks.

    Source:
    Peter Haining, The Classic Era of American Pulp Magazines

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