I’ve shown several paintings by GM Art & Color artist Paul A. Meyer. Here are three more.
Click image for a larger view. Click here to download a 5.8-MB PDF with all three paintings in high-resolution format. The size of the images in this PDF is based on the resolution of the original images, not the actual size of the paintings in inches. Source: Soulis.
This shows a generic FT locomotive. The stripes are shaped identically to those of the FT demonstrator, 103, but are orange instead of yellow as they were on the actual demonstrator. The painting is dated 12-30-40, which is after the demonstration tour was completed. This may have been a proposal to repaint the demonstrator for a railroad that would buy it or to paint another FT locomotive.
Click image for a larger view. Source: Palumbo.
This painting, which is dated May 15 1941, shows Milwaukee Road E6, which GM delivered to the railroad in March 1941. Although GM wasn’t printing data cards yet, this painting would have been used to help publicize GM locomotives in general and the E6 in particular.
Click image for a larger view. Source: Soulis.
This patriotic view of B&O FT number 5 is signed Paul A. Meyer, but unlike the other two paintings is undated. The numerous U.S. Army fighter planes in the air above the train indicates the painting was made after December 7, 1941. GM delivered number 5 to the B&O in August 1942, which further suggests that Meyer was still working for EMD in 1942, which was after the division created its own styling department.
Unfortunately, I have even less information on Paul Meyer than the other GM artists. Somewhere I read he was born in 1910 and died in 1994, but I haven’t been able to confirm that. His name is on this mid-1930s design from the GM Art & Color Division for a New York taxicab, which is either groundbreaking or derivative depending on whether it was before 1935 or after. I presume that after EMD opened its own styling shop that Meyer went back to work for other GM divisions but I don’t have any real evidence of that.
