J. Allen St. John - "Buccaneers of Venus" - Weird Tales pulp cover

For St. John Sunday, I thought I'd post this one that Deb spotted on display at the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle back in 2007. It's J. Allen St. John's cover painting for the January 1933 issue of Weird Tales, illustrating Otis Adelbert Kline's "Buccaneers of Venus." Kline was a popular author of planetary romance fiction in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Deb was in Seattle for a few days on a business trip back then, but during a break one day managed to get to the museum for a few hours. They had a special display of several dozen paintings from a private collection that were on loan to the museum, and as she went through it, she took photos of several she liked. When she got home she showed them to me, and we both agreed that the we loved the St. John. Since we knew the collectors who owned it, I emailed them to tell them that if they ever wanted to sell it, we'd be interested. Luckily for us, they decided that they'd be willing to part with it, and the museum ended up shipping it to us when the exhibition was over.

It was certainly our best buy as a result of a business trip!