H. J. Ward was an artist in the 1930s and 1940s who specialized in paintings used for pulp magazine covers.
In 1940 Harry Donenfeld commissioned Ward to paint the first full-length oil painting of Superman to promote The Adventures of Superman radio program.
The painting went missing sometime in the late 1950s after Donenfeld retired, and it was tracked down by art historian David Saunders in 2010. The painting had been hanging in the library at Lehman College in New York City.
