The original cover art for a 1937 edition of cult horror journal Weird Tales has sold for $47,150 at Hake's.

It led an online sale that closed on March 17.

Margaret Brundage was a prolific illustrator for Weird Tales

The piece was painted to illustrate a story titled The Carnal God, which is billed as "a weird story about a golden image that was instinct with evil life".

It's credited to Margaret Brundage, an artist who produced hundreds of covers for the publication.

Brundage was the first female illustrator working in the male-dominated world of pulp fiction.

Walt Disney was her classmate at high school and also at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts.

They knew each other well and there was talk of Brundage working on Snow White - although it never came to pass.   

Her spectacularly lurid designs for Weird Tales drew huge condemnation from moralists. The complaints increased massively when it was revealed that the M in M Brundage stood for Margaret.

People were outraged at her frank depictions of female sexuality.

This progressiveness was very much a reflection of Brundage as a person.

She was heavily involved with the Beat and civil rights movements and a regular at Chicago's radical speakeasy, the Dill Pickle Club.

Sadly, her work for the magazine came to an end in the early 1940s after the publication moved to New York.

Her record is $50,787, set at Heritage Auctions in 2008 for the first cover she produced for Weird Tales.

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