Born in Pennsylvania and educated at the Philadelphia School of Industrial Art, Hugh Joseph Ward sold his first pulp cover in 1931, when he was just 22 years old.  Over the next 14 years, Ward was one of the most prolific of the early pulp artists, painting covers for Trojan Publications like Spicy Mystery, Bedtime Stories, The Long Ranger, and Tattletales.  Sadly, his life and his career were both short by lung cancer.  70 years after his death, Ward’s paintings remain so popular among collectors that they regularly sell for thousands of dollars.

Here are just a few examples of his work: