🔥 Historic RARE Vintage Tiki Bar Los Angeles Mural Oil Painting FRANK BOWERS 48

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🔥 Historic RARE Vintage Tiki Bar Los Angeles Mural Oil Painting FRANK BOWERS 48:
$9500.00

This is a fantastic and Historically Important RARE Vintage Tiki Bar Los Angeles Mural Oil Painting on canvas, laid on Masonite board, by renowned California Mid-Century Tiki Bar and Dive Bar mural artist, Frank Bowers (1905 - 1964.) This specific painting originated from Vivian Laird's Restaurant and Jungle Room in Long Beach, California, and was painted by Bowers during the late 1940's. This artwork depicts an incredible mural-sized scene of an African tribal warrior hidden in the jungle foliage to the left of the scene. He wears feathers in his hair and carries a large shield. The subject rests his right arm on a large tree branch. A calm river is visible to the right if the scene, with a small boat carrying several European explorers in pith helmets, and their shirtless indigenous porters. To the very far right of the image, several small huts can be seen in the distance. Signed and dated: "Frank Bowers 1948" in the lower left corner. Bower's is well known for his Polynesian themed and Pirate themed artworks, and his African themed paintings are much scarcer. To my knowledge, the mural work done for Vivian Laird's Jungle Room was the only African themed Tiki Bar that Bower's ever worked on. Photos 23 shows a very similar mural, with some of the same characters, which originated from Vivian Laird's Restaurant and Jungle Room, and served as their main backbar artwork. This featured piece was part of a massive 30 feet wide mural. This monumental painting is approximately 48 x 72 inches. Good condition for age, with some faint scratches across the painted surface, speckles of white paint droplets, and moderate scuffing and edge wear to the original antique wooden frame. Additionally, the Masonite mounting has some old breaks which are visible on the verso (please see photos.) Due to its very large size, this item is Free Local Pickup Only from Los Angeles County, California. However, if you are willing to pay the costs of UPS Freight, please contact me for a S&H quote prior to purchase. Acquired from an old, eclectic collection in Los Angeles, California. You will not find another comparable work by Frank Bowers for sale anywhere. Paintings by Frank Bowers are in the permanent collections of the Ventura County Agricultural Museum in Santa Paula, California, the Catalina Museum for Art & History, and still existent in numerous old bars, social venues, and dining halls stretching from Nevada to Mexico. Priced to Sell. If you like what you see, I encourage you to make an Offer. Please check out my other listings for more wonderful and unique artworks!
About the Artist:
Frank Howard BowersBorn:1905 - California
Died:1964 - Long Beach, CaliforniaKnown for:Painting
Frank Howard Bowers (1905 - 1964) was active/lived in California.Frank Bowers is known for Painting.

Frank Howard Bowers was born in California on Nov. 20, 1905. By the 1930s Bowers had settled in Los Angeles. During the Depression he painted murals for the Federal Art Project in the Fruit Growers Exchange (Orange Harvest) and the Ruth Home School in El Monte. He died in Long Beach, CA on Dec. 11, 1964.
Edan Hughes,"Artists in California, 1786-1940"
Painting & Sculpture in Los Angeles, 1900-45; Death record.Murals by Frank Bowers graced churches, civic buildings — and many a dive bar

The walls ofthe Foc’sle Bar in Wilmingtonare adorned with a pair of racy murals painted more than half a century ago by an artist who allegedly agreed to render the tropical island tableaus featuring topless women as payment for his bar tab there.

The man who created them was Frank Howard Bowers, an artist who left a trail of art works throughout Southern California, from Wilmington to Long Beach, from Sierra Madre to South Gate, with a few more scattered even further afield.

Bowers was born in Alameda, California, on Nov. 20, 1905. By the time of the Depression, he had moved to the Los Angeles area and had begun to partner with fellow artist Arthur Prunier on a series of murals.

One of the pair’s first major works, “Orange Harvest,”graced the then-new California Fruit Growers Exchange, also known as the Sunkist Building, in downtown Los Angeles in late 1935.

TheLos Angeles Timesarts page favorably reviewed the four murals depicting the citrus industry in November 1935, complimenting Sunkist on adding original art to the corporate setting. (Unfortunately, both the building and the mural were demolished in 1972.)

The pair lateraccepted a commission from the National Orange Show in San Bernardino for a mural produced in 1941illustrating how California oranges travel from the grove through the processing plant and into the home.

Bowers and Prunier did murals for public and private spaces, including scenes of medieval Venice for the L.A. Art Association’s Beaux-Arts Ball on New Year’s Eve in 1935 and a fresco of the early Spanish California days for the Ruth Home for Girls in El Monte.

Bowers and Prunier’s public works were underwritten by the New Deal’s Federal Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The pair created two impressive such works for the South Gate City Hall in 1941.

Preserved behind glass, the untitled murals, which flank each other in the building’s entryway, depict regular working people, students and children involved in their daily activities. Neither this nor any of the other works Bowers and Prunier created were remotely salacious.

Prunier eventually went off on his own, leaving Bowers and moving to Vista, Calif., after World War II, where he continued producing murals for local businesses, especially cafes, during the 1950s.

Bowers lived in Sierra Madre during these years, producing artwork for a wide array of clients while occasionally working as a storyboard artist for Hollywood movie studios such as Warner Bros.

A battlefield mural of his graced the walls of VFW Post 3208 in Sierra Madre for decades. (The post’s building is now closed.) He painted several religious scenes for the Trinity Baptist Church (now the Golgotha Trinity Baptist Church) in Long Beach in 1949.

In 1952, he wrote a short art instruction manual, “Eyes and Expressions By Frank Bowers,” published by W.R. Hardcastle. The 24-page booklet featured black-and-white drawings with instructions on how to portray a variety of human subjects.

During this era, murals by Bowers began turning up in bars all over the region. Some popped up in far-flung locales, such as the Sourdough bar in Ketchikan, Alaska, the Bar Andaluz at the Riviera de Ensenada hotel in Ensenada, Mexico, andthe still-in-business Hard Hat Lounge in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Closer to home, Bowers produced murals, many of them risque, for theBuccaneer Loungein Sierra Madre and the Zamboanga South Sea Cafe and Nite Club on Slauson Ave., just north of Inglewood.

He also did work for several bars owned by Vivian Laird: the Restaurant and Jungle Room and the Bohemia Cocktail Lounge in Long Beach, and the South Seas in Orange County, and painted a mural for Laird’s private residence.

Bowers may have created his wildest work ever in the early 1960s with a series of paintings atthe Embers Lounge in Whittier. Its panels depict an erotic vision of hell populated with scantily clad women and dapper men in tuxes, all of them sporting devil’s horns and red tails.

It was during his later years that Bowers provided the artwork for the Foc’sle bar on Avalon Blvd. in Wilmington. (A long mural behind the bar is mostly obscured by liquor bottles.)

Though no documentation actually proves the point, it’s widely assumed that many of these bar and cocktail lounge works were provided as payment for bar tabs Bowers ran up at some of the establishments.

Bowers was married four times. His fourth wife, Vicki, was married to him when he died after a brief bout with cancer at 59 in Long Beach on Dec. 11, 1964. He was buried at Sunnyside Cemetery in Long Beach.

Note:Special thanks to Southern California News Group Senior Editor Thomas Bray.

Further research:TheTiki Central websitehas done excellent research work over the years on Frank Bowers, as well as on a plethora of other tiki-related topics.

I started hunting around and soon found a treasure trove on Frank Bowers, at an online paean to Polynesian pop calledTiki Room.At the Tiki Room website, Bowers is evidently something of a demigod. It turns out that somewhere along the way he developed a taste for the grog and became something of a specialist at painting murals in dive bars to pay off his bar tab. His paintings are the canvas equivalent of tattoo flash art, quite stylized in a manly sort of way. And who in the hell doesn't love devil girls?

Now I used to be a sign painter and unfortunately often got severe headaches from the chemicals and solvents. The only thing that could chelate the old painter's blood from the preferredRonan and One-Shot brand lead paint happened to be alcohol. That is why so many old painters were rummies, at least why I think it is so, anyway.

There are a plethora of bar murals that Bowers, often assisted by fourth wife Vicki, painted at the Tiki Room site, really worth scrolling through their many pages. In fact it is a really cool website.

Bowers evidently painted saloons from Vegas to Ensenada and all points in between, many showing tropical temptresses showing off their wares to hulking alpha sailors and buccaneers.

Somebody had to specialize in painting bar walls and Frank did it with both gusto and skillful craft.
Bowers illustrated matchbooks and menus, "how to" books and ceramics. Here are a bunch of cool photos that I purloined from the tiki room site and elsewhere, much obliged, pardon the quality of the shots. Not necessarily great art, but that is in the eye of the beholder after all and you can see how these babies would appeal to the besotted.I found the following blurb atanswerbag, written by a daughter, maybe explaining some of Frank's problems.

Vicky Bowers was the fourth wife of Frank Howard Bowers, a California local artist of the 30;s, 40's and 50's, with his last works being completed in 1964 in Serra Madre, California. Frank had three children, Jackson Bowers who drummed with Gene Krupa and disappeared somewhere in Florida around 1947 or 1948. His second child wasTommy Bowers a well known builder in the Belmont Shores area of So. Calif. His third wife was my mother Kathryn King Bowers, a writer and executive secretary to Henry Blanke at Warner Bros. Studios in 1944. Frank was a [story board man] on several motion pictures during the 40's. Of that marriage one child was born, Sydney Louise Bowers, [Female]. Frank went on to marry Vicky with whom he completed several large murals all over Calif as well as Mexico. Frank had a terrible accident in Mexico while painting a bull fight, the stands came down on him and he was never quite the same, but still painted just as well, but could not climb scaffolding so very few murals were done after that time. Frank Bowers died in 1964 in Los Angeles, Ca. , he had a short bout of Cancer that was to give him four short months, and was buried in Sierra Madre, Ca. I still have a few pieces of his work, look at it every day. S.M.

Here is a comment a girl named Melody wrote on the website that fills in a few more dots on the artist:

Hi, I was researching Frank Bowers and came across this discussion. I grew up under a Frank Bowers painting signed by Frank and dated '61 - it was hung over our mantle in Sierra Madre, where Frank and Vicki lived in the early sixties. My father was a carpenter, and the story is that Frank gave him the painting as payment for work my dad did for him. Vicki and Frank lived (and painted) in a store-front in downtown Sierra Madre. I recall mom talking about the fact that both Vicki and Frank had a fondness for the drink, and lived pretty poorly -- no stove or refrigerator, just a toilet and sink! I inherited the painting from my mother and it includes many of the Chinese figures shown in similar paintings here, although the female figure is fully clothed (no doubt because he knew our family consisted of five children). How can I post a picture of the painting here? I don't see any "attachment" button. I am also writing because I spent a lot of time at the VFW post (Veterans of Foreign Wars) bar in Sierra Madre (I was a kid, so they served me Shirley Temples). It was called "The Vets" by locals. I recall there were murals by Frank both upstairs in the bar, and downstairs in the meeting hall (where I had my wedding reception 25 years ago!) Then, the post sold the building, so I have no idea where the murals went (they may have been painted on the walls,perhaps still standing?) I moved away years ago, and most of dad's contemporaries have died, so I have no idea how to track this down.-Melody
p.s. My dad BUILT the bar at the Buccaneer when he helped in its remodel many years ago.
You want to call it kitsch, pulp or pop, feel free. One man's kitsch is another man's chicken dinner. I'll take lowbrow over some slick New York hipster artist of the month any day. I think that this stuff is cool and it is a shame that Bowers never made more of a mark on the jetstream for his iconoclastic, testosterone driven style.

I dig painters like this. Come check the paintings out before they get cleaned. If you have any information on the artist to share, please do! I want to thank the Tiki Room for the wonderful job they have done researching and celebrating these wonderful artists.
First postscript: Got on ancestry (dot) com - Frank married Vicki Vergez in 1950 in Orange. He was born in Alameda. There is an early 1935 photo of him sculpting but it is deemed private. I will continue to hunt...About Vivian Laird's Restaurant and Jungle Room:

Frank Howard Bowers (1905-1964) was an American painter and muralist born in California. He moved to Los Angeles during the Depression Era and was assigned to execute grand-scale murals for the WPA's Federal Art Project as part of President Roosevelt's New Deal program. Noteworthy commissions include a mural for the interior of the South Gate, California City Hall in 1941, and a series of murals for the Fruit Growers Exchange in Downtown Los Angeles (also known as the Sunkist Building, which has since been demolished) in the early 1930s. Aside from his involvement in the Federal Art Project he also leisurely painted several custom oil on canvas murals for bars and lounges in and around Long Beach and South Los Angeles. Some of the commissions were reportedly in exchange for his bar tab.

Murals were executed for the interior of restaurateur Vivian Laird's Restaurant and Jungle Room in Long Beach. Los Angelenos may find some of his tremendous murals in situ at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall and Buccaneer Lounge in Sierra Madre, Foc'sle Bar in Wilmington, and outside state lines at the Hard Hat Lounge in Las Vegas, Nevada.