George Brown Petty IV (1894 – 1975) was an American pin-up artist. His pin-up art appeared primarily in Esquire and Fawcett Publications's True but was also in calendars marketed by Esquire, True and Ridgid Tool Company. Petty's Esquire gatefolds originated and popularized the magazine device of centerfold spreads. Reproductions of his work, known as "Petty Girls," were widely rendered by military artists as nose art decorating warplanes during the Second World War, including the Memphis Belle.
Petty was not a particularly good student in high school, spending a great deal of time on extracurricular activities instead of schoolwork. His artistic bent first became obvious in high school, where he was the staff artist for the school newspaper.
During his high school years, he enrolled in evening classes at Chicago Academy of Fine Arts under the tutoring of Ruth VanSickle Ford, where he taught his own art course, charging classmates $5.00 per session. He also worked in his father's photo shop where he learned how to use an airbrush. In Paris, Petty studied art at the Académie Julian with Jean-Paul Laurens and others until 1916, when World War I caused Myron T. Herrick, ambassador at that time, to order all Americans to return home.
George Petty never discussed in detail those artists who influenced him, other than J. C. Leyendecker (an artist for The Saturday Evening Post during George's high school days) for his interpretation of men, Coles Phillips for his technique, and Maxfield Parrish for his use of light. However, it can be inferred from his later work that other influences included artists who were extremely popular in Paris at the time, such as Alfons Mucha, George Barbier and, in particular, the watercolor technique of Britain's William Russell Flint.
Petty is especially known for "the Petty Girl", a series of pin-up paintings of women done for Esquire from its first issue in 1933 until 1956. Petty frequently depicted these women with the relative lengths of their legs being longer—and the relative sizes of their heads being smaller—than those of his actual models.
In 1959 a vector rendition of a Petty Girl derived from a 1956 Esquire calendar was displayed as part of the diagnostics for a SAGE air defense computer. This is claimed to be "earliest known figurative computer art".
Two images of Petty Girls were used in the crowd on The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover.
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| Thanks for the Hospitality, Mr. Grover, c.1928 |
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| Esquire illustration, c.1937 |
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| He Doesn’t Smoke and He Doesn’t Drink, c.1937 |
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| No Particular Floor, Just Drive Up and Down, c.1939 |
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| c.1939 |
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| c.1939 |
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| Pinup telephone, c.1940 |
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| Esquire Centerfold, c.1940 |
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