Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
This electric and inventive progress-through-industry themed gouache painting by Mahlon Blaine is signed and dated 1955. The image dramatizes the industrial era with a shirtless industrial worker forging steel in a machine-age apocalyptic scene that draws its light and intensity and sense of movement from the fire’s sparking glow emitted from within an ominous furnace.
Artist: Mahlon Blaine
A wonderful detailed original drawing by Harrison Fisher illustrating Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, found on page 99 of Bobbs Merrill’s 1906 book, The Song of Hiawatha, an epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This charcoal and pencil drawing depicts the Indian Chief storyteller specifically. The complete book in which this appeared is included with the sale. Framed in a fumed oak arts and crafts aesthetic, wide quarter sawn frame, double matted and ready to hang in your home, office, art gallery or museum.
Artist: Harrison Fisher
A large and monumental allegorical oil on canvas by Charles Allan Winter featuring a dying Roman warrior being attended to by a firey haired maiden. Work is signed by the artist “Chas. Winter 1896 Paris” lower right, an early offering from this highly regarded vanguard artist. This was presumably created while Winter was studying at the Julianne Academie of Paris, this has a wonderful Pre-Raphaelite dramatic and impacting style. The grand scale of the painting adds to its evocative epic charm.
Artist: Charles Winter
This is a beautiful, unique, and rare preliminary graphite drawing by Gil Elvgren for a 1955 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 artists would […]
Artist: Gil Elvgren
Nestled in a quiet glen surrounded by tall, lean yet sturdy trees, flowering saplings, and a murmuring brook sits a log cabin at the end of a dirt path. A blue sky dotted with fluffy clouds tops off this picturesque scene of bucolic beauty. It is a scene that conjures up feelings of bygone times […]
Artist: Hy Whitroy
This pen and ink drawing with gouache highlights is an early work by renowned illustrator Cardwell Higgins and a sublime example of his art deco style.
Artist: Cardwell Higgins
This 1926 pastel by Cardwell Higgens was created for an exhibitor’s book produced by Paramount Pictures to promote their silent film star Florence Vidor.
Artist: Cardwell Higgins
A skillfully executed interior illustration for a serialized story by Pearl S. Buck titled China Gold which ran in Collier’s Magazine from February 7-April 18, 1942. Caption reads: ” Father Valerian came out from the chapel at once and led the wounded men to the hospital “. A large crisply-rendered oil on canvas mounted on board. Martha Sawyers artwork is in the Frank Gehry-designed Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis.
Artist: Martha Sawyers
A richly layered painting by the renowned early 20th century American Illustrator Arthur Ignatius Keller, depicting the climactic romantic scene from Emerson Hough’s bestselling 1909 novel 54-40 or Fight. Keller was a prominent artist whose work was sought after by many of the leading authors of the day. He was known for his mastery of light, texture and feeling, and this rare frontispiece painting displays his stunning prowess and talent.
Artist: Arthur Keller
This large and luminous original watercolor painting by the famous Belgian painter Frantz Charlet dates to the turn of the 20th centuty and features a serene pastoral mother and child figural scene. Charlet, a student of the Acadeémie de Bruxelles and l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris, known for his portraiture, landscape and genre work. Along with a group of ten colleagues, Charlet founded Les XX in October 1883.
Artist: Frantz Charlet
