Chicago illustrator Al Brule may be most fondly remembered for his post-World War II "pin-up girl" paintings. Like artists Gil Elvgren and Art Frahm, he was heavily influenced by another Windy City talent, Haddon Sundblom, who became famous for integrating beautiful--and mischievously underclad--women into U.S. advertising campaigns. Sundblom, according to an online history of pin-up art, had a "technique of using thick layers of paint to achieve a warmth and glow [that] was dubbed 'the mayonnaise school.' " Brule capitalized on that technique in his own commercial work.

A short biography, apparently lifted from 2002's The Great American Pin-up, by Charles G. Martignette and Louis K. Meisel, says that during the 1940s and the 1950s, [Brule] created many advertisements for major national corporations, most of them appearing as full pages in leading magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post. Brule also painted a number of advertising images that were reproduced as twenty-four-sheet billboards, which lined America's highways or were hung on the sides of buildings or specially erected platforms.

His pin-ups* captured curvilinear lovelies in scenes that were captivating without being overtly sexual. Their impact derived partly from their ostensible innocence. In one particularly well-known piece, Forced Landing, which appeared originally on a 1963 calendar, a slender brunette disembarks from a passenger jet, only to be met on the runway by a brisk wind that lifts her skirt and, as she reaches up to steady her hat, causes her to dump the contents of her purse. Somehow amidst all of this precipitant frenzy, the young lady's frilly knickers flutter down her gartered legs to settle atop her high heels. She couldn't be more embarrassed by this incident ... and the men descending the roll-up stairs behind her could hardly be more pleased. At one time, there were many of these "panties falling down" pin-ups making the rounds, a number of them executed by the aforementioned Frahm. The physics involved in such wardrobe malfunctions were never adequately elucidated, but the imagery was nonetheless popular. With ample reason.

Brule (who is said to have died in May 2001) is considerably less familiar for his paperback book illustrations. But he did many of them, both for children's books and for adult novels by the likes of Rex Stout, Mignon G. Eberhart, Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Louis Malley, and George Bagby.

Source:
Hampton Stone, Killer Covers,/killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2010/04/man-who-had-too-much-to-lose-by-hampton.html

* For more in-depth information about these terms and others, see AskART.com. Glossary http://www.askart.com/AskART/lists/Art_Definition.aspx.