Gil Elvgren's Private Stock

Gil Elvgren's Private Stock collects the private reference photographs the pin-up painter used to build his illustrations, images that were never meant to be seen as finished work.

Tony Nourmand edited the book. Reel Art Press published it in 2012 as a 192-page hardcover. It draws on Elvgren's personal archive of stereoscopic 3D slides and 35mm photographs, most shot in the 1940s and 1950s. The models are posed in the expressions and settings that would later appear in his calendar and advertising paintings. Seen together, the photographs show how closely Elvgren staged and directed his models before painting over them. He exaggerated proportions and lighting to arrive at the glossy, idealized style that made him one of the best-known pin-up artists of the period.

Elvgren painted calendar art for Brown & Bigelow. He also painted advertising campaigns for Coca-Cola and General Electric from the 1930s through the 1960s. His paintings remain among the most widely reproduced examples of American pin-up illustration from the mid-20th century.