10/19/2026
31 Days of Spook'tober
Day 19
Dracula
Artwork by Frank Frazetta circa 1989
Frank Frazetta - Dracula Painting Original Art (1989). In 1975, Frank Frazetta was commissioned to design the look for an animated adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. The project never happened, but it obviously sparked something in Frazetta. This painting dated 14 years later bears the same design for the character! Could this be what lead to his Dracula Meets the Wolfman comic another 20 years after this painting was made? This piece perfectly captures the timeless character in oil on 12" x 17.5" paper.
The legendary Frank Frazetta created this oil painting in 1975 featuring fiction's most famous vampire, Count Dracula. Entitled "The Prince of Darkness", this 12" x 18" work features a moody portrait of Dracula based on the image of the character that had become predominant in popular culture by the early 1960s, complete with widow's peak, fangs and cape. As explained by Frazetta himself in the book Testament: The Life and Art of Frank Frazetta (the largest Frazetta art book ever done), the painting was originally created as a movie poster for a 1975 Dracula film he was working on with Orsario Productions. The film never came to fruition, but the painting was later used as a cover for a Dracula paperback novel published outside of the U.S. (see image below), a chase card and even a concert poster, and prints of the piece have also been produced. In 1989, 14 years after Frazetta painted the piece, he applied a "Copyright 1989" notation next to his signature in the upper right quadrant of the piece. Frazetta is known to have applied this type of after-the-fact copyright notation with his paintings to protect his ownership rights as the images of his works were being licensed out for various uses, such as those mentioned above. The artwork is the professionally framed and will look great on the wall!
About Dracula
The character of Count Dracula is one of the most famous in all fiction. He first appeared in Dracula, an 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. The character appeared in film as early as 1921 but it was the 1931 film Dracula starring Bela Lugosi as the title character that forever enshrined the character as a part of popular culture. Interestingly, the widow's peak hairstyle that has become synonymous with Dracula and appears in this painting was not a part of the character as portrayed by Bela Lugosi on screen and it was not used in any films featuring Dracula in the following three decades either. Lugosi did sport a widow's peak when playing other characters in two non-Dracula films, White Zombie (1932) and Mark of the Vampire (1935). By the early 1960s, the widow's peak worn by these other characters was conflated with Dracula and became a part of the character's look. Christopher Lee would become Dracula for a later generation, appearing in multiple films between 1958 and 1976.
About the Artist
Frank Frazetta's reputation, and his importance to illustration art in the 20th century and beyond is well known. Frazetta's influence on other illustration artists borders on immeasurable, and Frazetta originals are among the most sought after pieces in the field of comic art and fantasy illustration. Like many artists of his generation, Frazetta began his career working in comics during the 1940s and 50s. At the start of the 1960s he made his move into mainstream illustration, creating renowned oil paintings that were used as the covers for a series of Conan books published by Lancer Books which redefined the genre of sword and sorcery visually. This led to his work for Doubleday in in the early 1970s illustrating a repackaging of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter novels. In 1973 Frazetta created the the popular fantasy painting Death Dealer I, which would be followed by other Death Dealer paintings and a book series. A number of recording artists have used Frazetta's paintings as cover art for their albums.
wwwfrazettamuseu.com.com
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