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Grapefruit Moon Gallery

Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration

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Illustration & Advertising Art

Dragon Lady

Artist:Cardwell Higgins
Date:1929
Medium:Pen & ink on board with gouache highlights
Dimensions:16 1/2" X 22" Framed 25 1/2" X 32"
Condition:Excellent
Original Use:Exhibited Fine Art

The artist’s signature lower right

1979 Promotional Brochure with illustration shown upper right

This Orientalist art deco avant-garde pen & ink drawing by Cardwell Higgins is an early work by the renowned illustrator that recalls the erotic and stylized work of British artist Aubrey Beardsley. This is part of a series of similarly exotic and provocative drawings Higgins created between 1927 – 1929, which would much later be marketed as a series of limited edition art prints under the guidance of Charles Martignette in 1979. The work is finely matted and framed behind glass in a handsome black and silver fine gallery frame.
This finely executed illustration shows a topless Chinese dancer accompanied by a man playing an erhu, depicted in a burlesque vaudeville-era Ziegfeld Follies style production. From the vast estate of legendary art collector Charles Martignette, who befriended the artist in his retirement in Hollywood, Florida and organized a one-man retrospective for Higgins in the late 1970s.

Framed and matted under glass view
Detail

Dragon Lady

Artist: Cardwell Higgins

Filed Under: Illustration & Advertising Art, Pin-Up & Glamour Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1920s, art deco, Cardwell Higgins, Charles Martignette, fantasy, fine art, glamour, Golden Age, hollywood, illustration, jazz age, machine age, risque
Added to Gallery: January 10, 2017

 

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