Cleo De Merode [Original Painting]

No Location, 2006. Soft cover. Fine. 8"x6. Burton, David W.. Original 8" x 6" painting, acrylic on canvas panel, by David Burton. Signed, dated '6 (2006), on the painting. Unframed. Fine. Something of a departure for Burton, a much-acclaimed, award winning artist who passed away on December 8th, 2011. Burton had done work for a wide variety of publishers in the Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror and Comics fields. Cleo de Merode (Cleopatra Diane de Merode), 1873-1966, was a French ballerina born in Biarritz to parents of Austrian nobility, renowned for both her talent and her beauty. Beyond the acclaim she received for her performances, she achieved notoriety as well for the unique hair-do - depicted in this painting, which, at the age of thirteen, she chose to introduce at Paris' most prestigious ballet, the Choryhée, and for the famous romantic (and to Merode monumentally embarassing) obsession carried by the Belgian King Leopold II for her, which led to his being nicknamed "Cleopold". Burton's works hang in galleries internationally; he executed private commissions for a number of well known authors and producers, among those Ray Bradbury, and Danton Burroughs described Burton's art as the best representation of his grandfather's Tarzan story-line in many years. Regarding that same illustrative sequence, comics legend Al Williamson said of Burton: "Its about damn time somebody got it right!" One of Burton's Mars pieces appeared in the Nov. 2002 issue of Heavy Metal. Many of his Mars pieces are featured as a portfolio in the comics series, "Lost Worlds of Science Fiction and Fantasy, #3" (Mike Hoffman; Burton was Hoffman's only guest artist in that series. Burton won a number of awards for his work, and completed work on the covers to the Paul O. Williams "Pelbar Cycle" for the University of Nebraska (Bison Press), the cover for Robert E. Howard's Breckenridge Elkins for Wildside Press and a portfolio of Robert E. Howard's The Four Kings for the Two-Gun Raconteur. He was, as of this original listing date, working on his fifteenth cover for Liquid Silver Books and has done numerous book covers for Renaissance Publishing (for whom this piece was executed). His cover for an edition of Philip Wylie's Gladiator received enthusiastic response. L307