Artist J. Allen St. John (1872-1957) is well known within the pulp world for his fantasy cover artwork on several pulp magazines, especially those with works by Edgar Rice Burroughs. He is thus considered the “Godfather of Modern Fantasy Art,” and it’s telling that his most famous disciples are Roy Krenkel and Frank Frazetta, themselves celebrated for their fantasy cover artwork as well.
There is one work that celebrates his work: The Paintings of J. Allen St. John: Grand Master of Fantasy by Stephen D. Korshak from Vanguard Productions in 2008.
This volume is excellent, with sections focused on different areas of his career, as pulp covers was but one area. He was doing work in other publications, paintings, book covers, pulp covers, and academic works. He seems to have done most of the original book covers from A.C. McClurg of Burroughs novels. For pulps he did covers for Blue Book, Weird Tales, Fantastic Adventures, Amazing Stories, Oriental Stories/Magic Carpet, and others.
I found it interesting on one page where we see his original cover for Burroughs’ The Moon Maid in 1926, while Krenkel did the Ace paperback cover in 1962, then Frazetta did it in 1973. And each cover has pretty much the same scene.
If I had a complaint, I would have loved to have seen a list of covers he did for Burroughs novels and for the pulps.
But this is another excellent work. It goes on my shelf of artist references. Check out Vanguard Productions, as they have other related works as well.
