Dec 14, 2023 - Sale 2656

Sale 2656 - Lot 31

Price Realized: $ 1,188
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
HARRY BARTON
Couple's passionate embrace. Paperback novel cover for Stories of Venial Sin (From Pipe Night) by John O'Hara (New York: Avon, 1955). Gouache on board. 419x305 mm; 16 1/2x12 inches on 21 1/2x15-inch board. Signed "Barton" in lower left image. Title inscribed on verso.

True to its name, this salacious pulp romance novel illustration reveals a sinful scene guaranteed to sell copies. The book contains twenty-five O'Hara stories that first appeared in The New Yorker and Collier's between 1939 and 1945. The back cover includes the tantalizing movie-esque tagline, "The Greatest of the Great O'Hara: cabbies and college kids . . . drunks, dolls, poets, punks . . . and just plain people . . . "