Coppertone Gals and Mermaid Fans

One of my prized possessions is a 1949 Sports Afield Magazine. I'm not a big fishing fanatic, and most of the rest of that particular magazine's run holds no interest, but not this one. Within it, there is a wonderfully impish picture of a mermaid underwater, red hair and a low-cut greenish tail, tying a fisherman's hook to an old inner tube. Serves the fisherman right.

I was intrigued to find (in the above link) that the artist of this particular painting was also the artist of the infamous Coppertone ad showing a young girl on a beach and her dog tugging down her swim bottoms. More over, the artist, Joyce Ballantyne Brand, was a student of the roguish pin-up artist Gil Elvgren, was herself the model for the aforementioned mermaid, and just for grins keeps a mermaid in her bathtub.