H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft by Virgil Finlay

H.P. Lovecraft Brooklyn, 1931

From the facial expression and the shadows on the face it is evident that Virgil Finlay based his now famous drawing on the photo of H.P. Lovecraft taken in Brooklyn, 1931 by Wilfred B. Talman during a Kalem Club meeting. The photo, signed by Lovecraft, came in the collection of Virgil Finlay. Virgil Finlay adjusted the image and displays H.P. Lovecraft as an eighteenth-century bewigged gentleman.

The drawing was prepared for Willis Conover's Science-Fantasy Correspondent, but instead appeared on the cover of the successor magazine Amateur Correspondent Volume 1, Number 2, May-June 1937.

The portrait has been used many times as front cover illustration, frontispiece, interior drawing or back cover illustration in countless books, journals, fanzines and other publications.

References:

• Amateur Correspondent Volume 1, Number 2, May-June 1937.
• Fantasy Collectors Annual ~ 1974, page 8.
• H.P. Lovecraft Portrait.
• H.P. Lovecraft Photo.