• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Recent Additions
  • The Gallery
    • About
    • Browse by Topic
    • eBay
    • Sorry, It’s Sold
  • Guarantee & Policies
    • Guarantee
    • Shipping & Payment
    • Amazon.com Shipping Information
    • eBay Buyer Protection
  • Contact & Social Media
    • E-mail & Phone
    • eBay
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • Twitter

Grapefruit Moon Gallery

Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration

  • Gallery Blog
  • Golden Gallery
  • Fine & Decorative
  • Illustration & Advertising
  • Paperback & Pulp
  • Pin-Up & Glamour
Sorry, It's Sold

Fat Cat On Top Of the World

Artist:Orson Lowell
Date:1905-12
Medium:Pen & Ink
Dimensions:Sight Size 23" x 22" Framed 32 1/2" x 31 1/2"
Condition:Excellent
Original Use:Presumably Interior Illustration for LIFE Magazine
Price: Sold
Full view
Full view
The downtrodden, detail
The downtrodden, detail
Detail of fat cat industrialist
Detail of fat cat industrialist

A sharp, scathing political commentary on the heartlessness of tycoons, barons, and monopolists. Depicting a fat cat industrialist sitting on top of the world with his east coast riches dreaming from behind binoculars of otherworldly conquests as he crushes the masses beneath him. A commissioned illustration presumably for an early issue of LIFE magazine, the image captures with wonderful humor the anti-Eastern, trust-busting late Progressive culture of the early 20th century. Work is beautifully framed and matted.

Framed and matted in fine gallery newer frame
Framed and matted in fine gallery newer frame

A biography on the artist

Illustrator Orson Lowell, the son of landscapist Milton H. Lowell, was born in 1871. He studied with the well-known anatomist, J. H. Vanderpoel, at the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois. He moved from Chicago to New York in 1893. Known for the richness of his work in pen and ink, he drew, in 1898, fifty illustrations for The Choir Invisible.

By 1907, he was employed at Life magazine, at that time a humor publication competing with Judge and Punch. He became known for his cartoons with a social message. Lowell was a contemporary of, and often discussed in relation to, the famous illustrator Charles Dana Gibson.

In 1899, F. Marion Crawford published Saracinesca, a two-volume work with one hundred pen and ink drawings and reproductions of paintings by Lowell featuring images of Italian fountains, ancient buildings and bridges.

Lowell illustrated magazines like Life, Judge, The American Girl through the 1940’s. Before the decline of illustrated novels in the early 1920’s, Lowell created illustrations for works little-known today, Love in Old Clothes, 1896; C.N. and A.M. Williamson’s Lady Betty Across the Water, and the works of Charles de Kock.

The artists signature
The artists signature

Orson Byron Lowell died in 1956.

In 2002, Lowell’s work was represented in Toast of the Town: Norman Rockwell and the Artists of New Rochelle, an exhibition of twenty-five artists associated with that New York town, held at the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Fat Cat On Top Of the World

Artist: Orson Lowell
Price:  Sold

Filed Under: Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1910s, american, Andrew Carnegie, cartoon, globe, LIFE, Orson Lowell, satirical
Added to Gallery: January 29, 2007

 

Contact Grapefruit Moon Gallery



    Primary Sidebar

    Join our mailing list

    Grapefruit Moon Gallery Around the Web

    Facebook
    Instagram
    Pinterest
    Twitter

    Recent Additions

    Gone With the Wind

    Pigeon Feathers

    Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, A Dying Cat, A Traded Car

    Footer

    About Grapefruit Moon Gallery

    Grapefruit Moon Gallery, based in Minneapolis MN, specializes in vintage pin up and original illustration art.  We are the proud home of the Bunny Yeager archives.

    Since 2003, Grapefruit Moon Gallery has been a leading dealer of exclusive original paintings by Gil Elvgren, Alberto Vargas, Earl Moran, Rolf Armstrong and Henry Clive, as well as vintage photographs, prints, and period decorative arts in ceramic and metal.

    All artworks featured are original, accurately represented, and guaranteed to be the work of the named artist.

    Interested buyers may view pieces by appointment and we are happy to answer any questions you may have. [Contact Us]

    Grapefruit Moon Gallery on eBay

     

    Grapefruit Moon Gallery on Instagram

    View on Instagram

    Copyright © 2023