Born in 1920 in Kansas, Albert Leslie Buell paperback cover artist, magazine illustrator, and Coca Cola artist worked with Elvgren in the Sundblom shop in Chicago. His oils are among the best pin-ups in that medium, although existing originals (on board, not canvas) are much smaller than those of Elvgren, Ballantyne and Ekman.

Perhaps that explains a certain delicacy in his work; Buell's pretty girls really are "pretty." These girls-next-door are captured in such typically innocent pursuits as sewing, playing tennis, or riding a swing. Underclad as they are, Buell's girls have a wholesomeness, an ingenuousness, rare in the pin-up form.

Often his pin-ups have solid black backgrounds, a la Walt Otto; in other cases, he creates f...