



Frank McCarthy(1924-2002)Flash flood 13 3/4 x 13 3/4in framed 20 1/4 x 20 1/2in
Sold for US$14,025 inc. premium
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Aaron Bastian
Director

Kathy Wong
Senior Director, Fine Art
Frank McCarthy (1924-2002)
signed 'McCarthy' (lower right)
oil on academy board
13 3/4 x 13 3/4in
framed 20 1/4 x 20 1/2in
Painted in 1955.
Footnotes
Provenance
Sale, Altermann Galleries & Auctioneers, 2006 Last Call Auction, August 19, 2006, lot 186.
Property of an Aspen, Colorado Collector.
Literature
Cavalier Magazine, July 1955, illustrated on the cover.
Cowboy Artist Frank McCarthy studied illustration at Pratt Institute in New York and began his career as a commercial illustrator for movie studios, paperback book companies and magazines including Colliers, Reader's Digest, Outdoor Life, Argosy, Cosmopolitan and Cavalier. Flash Flood was the cover illustration for the July 1955 issue of men's magazine Cavalier used to promote the 1950 pulp Western novel Stretch Dawson by W.R. Burnett included in the issue. In the story, title character Stretch Dawson is the leader of a band of outlaws who are trapped in a ghost town with a gold miner and his daughter. Stretch is torn between stealing the gold and his growing affection for the daughter, nicknamed 'Mike'. The illustration's intense action scene features the novel's title character on horseback as he urges his horse to outrun a violent flood emerging from the gold mine.