George Quaintance was born June 3, 1902 in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, as the only son of a farmer family. His parents allowed him to develop his artistic potential instead of forcing him into their way of living and supplied him with paint, brushes and also fine art training.

Quaintance moved to New York at the age of 18 to study at the prestigious Art Students' League. A short while later he began the study of classical and jazz dancing and in a brief stage career appeared with a critically acclaimed vaudeville dance troupe. In the late 1930s, he turned his artistic talents to photography, magazine editing, interior decorating, stage design and hairdresser. He continued his painting with portraits of notable people, including foreign diplomats, Washington politicians and movie stars.

About 1947, he moved to Los Angeles and his beautiful art started to attract people’s attention. He painted and photographed many handsome young men for physique magazines. His Hollywood images included the bedroom walls of film and stage star Mae West. Quaintance, a tall handsome blond with a muscular body, often included his own image in his paintings.

In the early 1950s he moved to a ranch in Phoenix with his long-time lover and partner, Victor Garcia. Victor was the first of a series of Latino lovers. Quaintance loved the cowboy image so much he adopted it himself, wearing tight Levi’s and western shirts with his exotic boots. The Western scenery had always been his favorite and he produced many of his most beautiful paintings while living on the ranch. Quaintance, an artist who drove himself to create and to make his work financially successful, died of a heart attack at age 55 on November 8, 1957.

About 60 of the iconic male physique oil paintings by Quaintance are in the hands of private collectors and museums today. Their value increases each year because they were created by the first pioneer of the gay male physique in America.

This biography was taken from materials collected by John Waybright and Ken Furtado, co-authors of an upcoming comprehensive Quaintance biography. Anyone desiring further information may e-mail: waybrightj@comcast.net or ken_furtado@earthlink.net.