Bio
Margaret Brundage (1900-1976), the Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art is best remembered as the cover artist for Weird Tales during the 1930s, a time many would consider the magazine’s golden age.
She studied fashion design at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts but eventually dropped out. One of her classmates at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts (as well as at McKinley High School) was Walt Disney. Her first professional job was in 1925 drawing pen & ink designs for local fashion designers.
In 1927 she married Myron “Slim” Brundage. They had one son, Kerlynn in 1927. Slim was a house painter, an activist in the Chicago labor movement, alcoholic, and terrible husband.
After presenting her work to an editor at Weird Tales, she landed her first pulp cover, the Spring 1932 edition of Oriental Stories. Popular Fiction Publishing owned Oriental Stories, Weird Tales, and Magic Carpet Magazine. She worked with them all but is most associated with Weird Tales.
And from there the rest is history. From 1933 to 1945 Brundage illustrated 66 Weird Tales covers starting with this one:
Which was censored a bit. Here’s the final result:
One reoccurring theme throughout her cover art tended to be women in bondage (if you didn’t notice). Authors would throw scenes with nude women being tortured or whipped for good measure. Hoping it would land them the cover story of that issue. Sometimes, these scenes made no sense to the story.
And the original:
Couple the whole, “women getting tortured” motif with the fact that she signed her artwork, “M. Brundage” and you have people assuming this artist is some sadistic dude. This is also during the time of the Hollywood Production Code and on the heels of the Temperance Movement, so you had a lot of puritanical social forces at play.
The editor finally revealed that she was a woman when these lame-o’s complained about the sexuality of Brundage’s artwork. Hoping that’d shut them up—it didn’t work. As anyone who’s seen one group of people gets mad at one company or entity on Twitter can attest, trying to please the crowd never works.
The backlash didn’t help Brundage’s career. The moral police were even more outraged that the artist was a woman.
In 1938, Popular Fiction Publishing—the publishers of Weird Tales—moved to New York City which really hurt Brundage’s career. With the move, Brundage lost her only steady publisher. They did give her occasional assignments for the next seven years, but it wasn’t the same as before. The bad publicity around Brundage didn’t help, but what hurt further was the fact that Brundage’s art was almost exclusively in pastels—a medium that doesn’t travel well.
After Weird Tales moved to New York, Brundgage’s work dried up entirely. Unfortunately, she lived with her son in Chicago in relative poverty for the rest of her life. She continued to illustrate fantasy scenes as a hobby. Margaret Brundage died at age seventy-five on April 9, 1976.
After her death, her original works have been auctioned for thousands of dollars. For example, the June 1937 issue of Weird Tales, sold for $47,150 in 2016.
More Reading / References
Pulp Artists — Margaret Brundage
The Internet Speculative Fiction Database – Brundage
Meet Margaret Brundage the First Lady of Pulp Pin-Up Art — Fast Company
Weird Tales – Yes, they’re still around.
Archive.org – Weird Tales – You can download scans of full issues here. You’re welcome.
Chicagology – Chicago Artists – Brundage
IllustrationHistory.org – Margaret Brundage
New Pulp Fiction – American Pulps
Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage: Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art by Stephen D Korshak and J. David Spurlock
American Pulps – Pulp Art Book Collection – Bookshop.org
Pulp Pictures: The Erotic Art of Margaret Brundage — Eclectic Ladyland
