[On the occasion of the artist's birthday]
The artist Gayle Hoskins did many covers for Western Story Magazine, starting in 1929. One of the few positive things to emerge from the Great Depression was that many excellent cover artists were forced to do illustrations for pulp magazines as their incomes dropped. This led to improved quality in covers overall during the early 1930s, and provided good mentors like Emmett Watson to up and coming artists like Rudolph Belarski.
Hoskins did a series of 27 thematically related covers titled "A cowboy's day" starting with the January 3, 1931 issue and ending with the July 4th issue. Of these covers, 20 were collected as a set of prints offered for sale by Street and Smith, the publisher of Western Story. I don't know why some of the covers were omitted, i included them here (taken from the FictionMags Index of Western Story Magazine).
I got hold of a nearly complete set, missing only a single print. Thought you might want to see it. Tell me your favorites in the comments. Mine are 4, 14 and 20 in the printed set, and "Snake and his rustler band" from the unreprinted ones.
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| The Jan 3, 1931 issue introducing the series of covers titled "A Cowboy's Day" by Gayle Hoskins |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day #1 Dawn |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day #2 Saddling Up |
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Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day #4 The morning buck
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day - A message for Slim |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day #5 Sound Again |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day - Slim spots rustlers |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day - Snake and his rustler band |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day #7 Rustler's Brand |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day #8 The Rustler Shoots |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day #9 Pursued |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day #10 Water |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day #13 A Hot Trail |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day #15 Kidnaped |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day #16 Posse |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day - Slim's Girl in Snake's Power |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day #17 Picking 'em off |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day #18 Devil's Due |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day - To safety with Slim |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day #19 Round-Up |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day - Slim and Rita's romance trail |
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| Gayle Hoskins - A Cowboy's Day #20 Happy end of a cowboy's day |
