Shadow pulp interior - “The Partners of Peril” (circa. 1936) - Tom Lovell - Finally Found!

The Story: **Lost original interior Shadow pulp artwork (circa. 1936) – Finally Found!!**

The Shadow – 1936 Original Art - Double Page Spread from the Interior Pulp Illustration by Tom Lovell - from “The Partners of Peril”. (13” x 18”)

Finally acquired it after 13 years of searching for this lost piece!

Significance
This illustration is not only extremely rare, but historically significant as it came from the story of "The Partners of Peril" from the November 1st, 1936 Shadow pulp, which of course was the story that Finger and Kane based the first Batman story on in Detective #27.

It also originally came from the private collection of Everett Raymond Kinstler, who was both a friend and an admirer of the work that Lovell did on The Shadow interior pulp illustrations from 1931-37.

History
I was at the Illustration House booth at the San Diego Comic-Con in 2004 when I was shown an extremely rare example of original Shadow artwork by the great Tom Lovell in one of their binders on the table. I was blown away both at Lovell’s brushwork and detail in the artwork, and the size of it (being a double-page spread). Fred mentioned that they had the original back in their office/galley in NYC. I paid for it, then one month passed, and no original artwork. I phoned Illustration House and asked what is happening, and they said they could not find it and were scouring everywhere to locate it. Illustration House refunded my money, but kept looking for the piece for several months and continued to contact clients to see if it was sold “off the books”, returned to the consignor, accidentally put in a package with other pieces, or maybe grew legs and just walked out the door. I was extremely disappointed as I really wanted the artwork.

Once Fred left Illustration House he still continued to look. Over the past 13 years I have contacted nearly every comic and illustration art dealer and private collector explaining about the art and trying to track it down. Disheartened, I thought that I would never see the piece again.

To present time...One Saturday morning (out of the blue about) 6 weeks ago, I received a call from a gentleman who was a curator for the collection of a private art collector in PA. He explained that his client has an extensive Illustration Art collection and had ventured onto CAF (ComicArtFans) website and saw my write up on the missing Lovell Shadow piece, and asked the curator to contact me. When the gentleman called me, he said I would have no idea who he was, but that he was asked to contact me and tell me his client had the Lovell original art. We had a good chat and I then sent him pictures of my Shadow collection which he forwarded to owner of the collectio Immediately I received a phone call back from the gentleman (curator) saying that he was in the process of getting his client’s collection cataloged and photographed and would be featured in a month long exhibit next May in an Art gallery in PA. He said that after the month-long showing was done, the owner was going to sell the piece to me as he thought it should go into my Shadow collection based on my “past” regarding the piece and how he enjoyed the pictures of my collection. It turned out that when they photographed it for the catalog a couple of weeks back, they decided to not make me wait, and sell me the piece and just have the image in the catalog.

I am extremely grateful to the owner for selling this to me and the gentlemen photographing and curating his collection for helping making this happen.

That is the story, and I have finally acquired the original artwork that I assumed was lost and I would never see again. I am overjoyed, to say the least!

Dwight Fuhro