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Best of Whispers Cover

Artist: LEE BROWN COYE (Painter)

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Artwork Details

Title:	Best of Whispers Cover
Artist:	LEE BROWN COYE (Painter)
Media Type:	Paint - Oil
Art Type:	Cover
For Sale Status:	NFS
Views:	598
Likes on CAF:	3 4
Comments:	0
Added to Site:	4/11/2021
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Description

20" x 14.5" by Lee Brown Coye circa 1973. Original painting in oil on canvas board. Published as the original cover for the "Best of Whispers" book edited by Stuart David Schiff, (Borderlands Press / Whispers Press, 1994). From the Stuart Schiff collection who commissioned and acquired it directly from the artist in 1973.

Painted works by Lee Brown Coye are rarer than hens teeth and I am so fortunate to get a published color painting by probably one of the most unusual artists in modern time. While seemingly simplistic in its composition, this painting incorporates some fundamental recurring themes in many of Coye's work. While B&W works of Coye surface on the market from time to time, finding a color painting is a rare event! If you don't know about Lee Brown Coye, I implore you to read what you can. He was truly a fascinating and unusual artist to say the least. If I didn't know better, I'd say more akin to an alien in human form!

This painting has an interesting story, best told by the former original owner Stuart Schiff, who got it directly from Coye. According to Schiff, "August Derleth was an important author, poet, editor, and publisher in the horror-fantasy field. His Arkham House publishing company saved the fiction of Howard Phillips Lovecraft (often referred to as the 20th Century's Edgar Allan Poe) from the obscurity of the pulp magazines in which HPL's stories first appeared. One of his Lovecraft-related books printed a B & W Coye picture (that I have never been able to locate), that I instantly fell in love with. I was still in dental school but was also already selling books to include Arkham House titles so I was in contact with Derleth (from whom I based my own editing and publishing ��career.) He put me in touch with Lee and a friendship started circa 1969. I used some B & W Coye art (reprints) in a festschrift (HPL (1972) was its title) that I associate-edited so already was working with Lee. I bought art and corresponded with him from 1969 on. When I started my WHISPERS magazine in early 1973, I used some of his art in the first issue. A noted author said of that issue of WHISPERS: �Here is WEIRD TALES come again!�. WEIRD TALES was a pulp that started in 1923 (and ended in 1954) and published a lot of Lovecraft�s fiction. It also featured several color Lee Brown Coye covers in the 1940s. I asked Lee to do his best to create a new WEIRD TALES cover for me and this was the result. WHISPERS was not doing color work at that time so I did not use the piece right away. The art moved with me from from NC to TX to NJ and to NY before I found the right project for it. My BEST OF WHISPERS anthology was that undertaking.

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About the Owner

	Neon Dragon ( 6 ) Premium Gallery Owner
Joined:	October 2017
Last Login:	September 2025
Website:	http://www.timevaultart.com
Country:	UNITED STATES
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