curator

One of the more surreal takes on the 1929 stock market crash which led to the Great Depression is on view in this October 1930 Campbell’s Soup advertisement which appeared in The Saturday Evening Post. A Campbell’s Soup Kid reads the latest stock news from a state of the art glass domed stock ticker machine. Wishful text reads “The news that I’m reading look’s dandy to me. Like a plateful of Campbell’s Which fills me with glee.” This original illustration painting is a supremely odd example of Americana advertising.

Dandy To Me

Artist: School of Grace Drayton

An original Calendar published luminous oil on canvas by noted and prolific pin-up illustrator Art Frahm used in 1956 by “The Goes Litho. Company” of Chicago Illinois. This large and pristine pin-up painting displays to fine effect Art Frahm’s softer and less rough around the edges sensibilities and provides a good-girl art glamour counterpart to his infamous series of “panties dropped” pin-up paintings that have recently sold from the Charles Martignette estate and found buyers at between $20,000 – $25,000.00 per work at auction.

Roses From You

Artist: Art Frahm

A stiring and patriotic moving World War I era original illustration by noted American illustrator C. Clyde Squires (1883-1970) who was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1883. His work was published in Western Romances, LIFE, and Womans Home Companion. Signed lower right “C. Clyde Squires.” Measures 17 x 24 inches unframed, framed 18 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches. Painted on artist’s board, very good condition, framed behind glass.

Meeting The Kind Nurse

Artist: C. Clyde Squires

This is a large preliminary charcoal drawing by Gil Elvgren that was an alternative suggestion for a mid-1950s speciality advertising calendar for Brown & Bigelow’s exclusive “Miss Sylvania” line for Sylvania electric. The Miss Sylvania account adapted The Great American Pin-up to middle America’s buttoned up sensibilities. Each year one of the calendar company’s star […]

Miss Sylvania-Preliminary Drawing

Artist: Gil Elvgren

An explosive World War II battle scene rages in this published Bruce Minney illustration. A Nazi submarine has crashed ashore and brought the fight to land in this lurid piece that is a quintessential example of the style coming out of men’s magazines of this period. With three U.S. Navy soldiers wounded and down for the […]

Man’s World Nazi Battle Scene

Artist: Bruce Minney

This original fine art figure study by the pre-eminent pin up illustrator comes from a collection of Gil Elvgren preliminary graphite drawings that we acquired which were found in a house in Sarasota, Florida where the artist once lived. With restraint and a detailed eye towards anatomy, the artist captures a brunette with a contemplative pose, offering […]

Nude Figure Study

Artist: Gil Elvgren

With psychedelic, folk art, and art nouveau inspired style, this fine art surreal nude by Ted Coconis captures a nude erotic goddess dancing above the clouds, surrounded by smaller figures that draw on iconography from a number of different cultures. The cherub and bear and foreshortened men who gloat behind her, all suggest something […]

Above the Clouds

Artist: Ted Coconis

Harold McCauley created this historical Revolutionary War image of a Minuteman using coded communication to alert the Colonial forces of British troop movement as cover art for the May/June 1975 issue of Signal magazine, the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) trade publication. AFCEA is a non-profit group which emerged from the Signal Corp after World War II that serves the information […]

Signal

Artist: Harold McCauley

Using an inventive pointillism technique, Henry J. Soulen creates a moody and evocative artwork in an American impressionist style in this dramatic painting. This was likely featured as an interior illustration for The Saturday Evening Post. Known for his Orientalist exotic aesthetic, Soulen was an early student of Howard Pyle, he utilized a heavy expressive brush strokes and impasto oil paint technique. The scene features a masked bandit readying himself to duel for the honor of the lovely Edwardian attired maiden.

The Duel

Artist: Henry Soulen

An inventive early offering by the noted industrial designer Paul Ritter MacAlister, who went on to be an interior designer especially noted for his mass-produced “Plan-a-Room” kit with scale furniture and room layouts that could be used to plan and organize home spaces for consumers. This is a very well executed work it is done in the style of Erte essentially and features an art deco nude goddess of the darkness cowering under the bright sunshine radiating from the corner of the canvas – superimposed with a pipe smoking skeleton in a trompe l’oeil “trick of the eye” manner.

Spain, 1929

Artist: Paul MacAlister

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