A porn scholar friend of mine is conducting research on the life of erotic artist George Quaintance and is seeking information for an upcoming book. Anyone who has enjoyed vintage gay porn will immediately recognize the paintings, if not the style.

George Quaintance (1902-1957) was a pioneer painter and photographer who
excelled at idealized and highly eroticized representations of the male
body. His paintings and illustration are found on the covers and in the
pages of most of the seminal physique and body-building magazines of the
1940s and 1950s, such as Physique Pictorial, Body Beautiful and Demi-Gods.
Quaintance worked for Lon of New York and for Bob Mizer, of LA’s Athletic
Model Guild, eventually opening his own studios in Los Angeles and later in
Phoenix, Arizona.
Independent scholars Ken Furtado, of Phoenix and John Waybright, of Luray,
Virginia, are writing the first-ever biography of Quaintance, and are eager
to hear from anyone who can contribute information to the project. They
especially would like to hear from owners of original Quaintance paintings
or sculptures, anyone who may have known or modeled for Quaintance, anyone
with correspondence or other original documents, or anyone who can provide
reliable first-hand anecdotal information.
Contact Ken at kfurtado@surfbest.net or call 602-222-9796.
A good online site where you can view many of Quaintance’s paintings is
http://www.masculineimage.net/quaintance/george.html.