The Adventure is Yours

Throughout 1982 and into 1983, I regularly saw this full-page advertisement for the Moldvay/Cook/Marsh Dungeons & Dragons boxed sets in the pages of Dragon.

The ad is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First, the image at the bottom left, showing five people sitting at a table playing D&D (with the cover of Keep on the Borderlands clearly standing up in front of the DM) seems to depict the same group of people who appear in a TV commercial from around the same time. That suggests that this print ad was part of a larger, multi-prong effort to introduce "the world's most talked about role-playing adventure" to a wider potential audience. 
Second, the ad features artwork in a style quite distinct from that of any artist I associate with D&D of that era. Since there's no obvious artist's signature, identifying its origin is difficult. It's possible that this question has already been resolved. If so, I'd love to know the identity of the artist. Beyond that, it's also noteworthy, I think, that the illustration depicts three characters (who appear to be a thief, a magic-user, and perhaps an elf) walking/riding at night through the streets of a fantasy setting rather than something more obvious, like a party fighting a dragon or some other monster. Perhaps the marketing people felt this was redundant in light of the inset pictures of the two boxed sets, one of which shows that very scene.

I have no idea how effective this advertisement was in its intended purpose, but I've always liked it.