Fine & Decorative Art

Along with developments in lithography that led many leading talents of the day into careers as illustrators, the 20th century saw innovations in photography, printmaking, and design that revolutionized fine, public, and decorative art. Below, you will see showcased original artworks from the Art Nouveau, American Arts & Crafts, Art Deco, WPA-era and beyond.

An intoxicating and erotic reclining nude by the well-listed artist Harold Mott-Smith. Born in Hawaii, Harold Mott-Smith was a painter who lived in Paris from 1894-1906. He studied at the Academie Julian with Jean Paul Laurens, and exhibited in 1894 with the Boston Art Club as well as Paris Salon. After returning to New York, Mott-Smith worked for GE, illustrating calendars and painting portraits of Thomas Edison. This captivating oil on canvas dates from his early Hawaiian career and showcases his sensuous style.

Hawaiian Art Deco Nude

Artist: Harold Mott-Smith

Secure Cables is a moving and kinetic, exhibited, WPA aesthetic, signed and dated oil on canvas painting by the Scottish Artist Albert Gordon Thomas. This honors the hard working efforts of those who advanced industry and commerce during the dizzying years of the industrial revolution and machine age. This was exhibited in 1935 in Scotland at […]

Secure Cables

Artist: Gordon Thomas

From a recent east coast estate auction, Grapefruit Moon Gallery is delighted to have acquired a previously unseen collection of American Impressionist oil paintings dating to the 1940s and executed in a WPA, Regionalist, and often times stark Ashcan School design aesthetic. These are the work of the important American photo-journalist Alfred Statler, who was […]

Runaway Train

Artist: Alfred Statler

The tenth and final proposed mural painting by Mahlon Blaine for a New York City interior showroom for industrial designer Paul Ritter MacAlister, created in 1939 under the pseudonym G.Christopher Hudson. In this original gouache painting a nude uses a movie camera to capture assorted gadgets working together to become a Rube Goldberg machine, in a pointed commentary on the needless complexities of life in the machine age. Painting is handsomely framed and matted behind glass and is initialed lower left from the estate of Paul Ritter MacAlister.

The Chain Reaction

Artist: Mahlon Blaine

The ninth of ten proposed mural paintings by Mahlon Blaine created for a never completed Paul Ritter MacAlister interior space in New York City. Under the pseudonym G. Christopher Hudson Blaine developed this sequence of dystopian views of the machine age. In this work a nude hand feeds dollar bills to an animate yet robotic cash register which serves as the greedy symbolic manifestation of industry. Again the artist employs a patriotic red & white and blue color palette to alarming effect.

Feeding The Man

Artist: Mahlon Blaine

This is the largest and most detailed and only signed painting from this series by Mahlon Blaine, number eight of ten the verso is titled “Nude on Gadget – Out of Control” and signed “G. Christopher Hudson” with a New York City address. In this image a nude sits atop the observation deck of the Chrysler Building high above New York City in a frozen in time Salvador Dali like winter surrealist cityscape. A frozen water faucet has created a block of ice that a nude goddess sits on oblivious to the cold as city workers attempt to break the ice and another hoists construction lumber from the skyscrapers iconic art deco modernist machine-age observation deck.

Nude on Gadget (Out of Control)

Artist: Mahlon Blaine

The seventh of ten mural concepts by Mahlon Blaine for a New York City public space designed by noted industrial designer Paul Ritter MacAlister. This work is stylistically a departure, a cubist abstract half man/half woman nude that guards or invites one into a passageway in a color palette and modernist style suggestive of Picasso.

The Passage

Artist: Mahlon Blaine

The sixth of ten 1939 mural designs by Mahlon Blaine, which were intended to become murals for the studio or showroom of noted New York City industrial designer Paul MacAlister. A vacuum tube headed, praying mantis-like robot battles a cowering nude goddess in the ongoing saga of the menace of industry. Marked on verso design #6, this comes beautifully matted and framed from the estate of Paul Ritter MacAlister.

Cowering Nude With Robot

Artist: Mahlon Blaine

The fifth of ten 1939 mural designs by Mahlon Blaine, which were intended to become murals for the studio or showroom of noted New York City industrial designer Paul MacAlister. In this scene our nude goddess pours flower petals into the mouth of a robotic machine as a Buckingham Palace Royal Guard on horse cleverly protects her modesty. The adjoining stone masonry watches on in amusement as a bird of pray hovers above tied from a high building rafter that frames the scene. An inspired visionary artwork in a red, white and blue Americana color palette. Marked on verso design #5, this comes beautifully matted and framed from the estate of Paul Ritter MacAlister.

Nude Feeding Industry

Artist: Mahlon Blaine

A mixed media gouache and pastel portrait work by the gifted and fondly remembered Russian Jewish artist Alexander Davidovich Ziliouk – Sacha Zaliouk. The artist moved to Paris in 1912 and studied at the Paris Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He contributed jazz-age art deco illustrations for many of the notorious French Roaring twenties flapper girl magazines such as Fantasio, Sourire, Le Journal Amusant, La Vie Parisienne and the more scabrous Paris-plaisirs. He set up a studio in the cities Montparnasse area and was a well known and often exhibited avant-garde artist as seen by this haunting and evocotive unique portrait of a lovely young Parisian.

Through a Paris Window

Artist: Sacha Zaliovk

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