Illustration & Advertising Art

At the turn of the 20th century, Industrial Revolution inventions brought technological advancements to printmaking that ushered in a Golden Age of American illustration. Publishers and calendar companies developed new techniques for producing multi-color offset lithographs that were fast, affordable, and flat-out glorious to view, blurring the distinction between fine art and "art for commerce." The best examples by the finest commercial illustrators were revered by the public, and today are beloved by collectors.

A smartly conceived and modern jazz age oil-on-canvas painting of a ravishing Jeanette MacDonald, the cover for The New Movie Magazine, June 1932. Executed in a high glamour, severe art deco style by the American Illustrator McClelland Barclay. Work is a defining example by this talented and prolific artist and comes beautifully framed in an ornate gold gilt American Arts & Crafts fine museum quality carved frame. A lost treasure from the golden age of Hollywood glamour and elegance.

Jeanette MacDonald

Artist: McClelland Barclay

A fun and breezy interior magazine illustration for Argosy magazine – July, 1946 by Ray Johnson illustrating a story titled “My Son’s Old Man” by Fred Malina. A classic Americana image featuring a soda jerk performing his then coveted job at a snappy modernist Art Deco styled soda fountain much to the delight of two lovely […]

The Soda Jerk

Artist: Ray Johnson

A stunning, highly detailed, bizarre, and erotic work by the brilliant illustrator Fortunio Matanio. This historically accurate and technically remarkable drawing depicts a climactic scene from Machiavelli’s The Prince. Text on verso reads “Gio Matteo Curing the daughter of Amedia.” The scene depicts an erotic yet twisted exorcism, which is both incredibly intricate and almost photo-realistic in composition. This most likely was created to accompany an excerpt from Machiavelli’s Renaissance masterpiece printed in Britannia & Eve Magazine.

Gio Matteo Curing the Daughter of Amedia

Artist: Fortunio Matania

An original pen and ink drawing from Nell Brinkley one of the premier female figures of the “Golden Age of American Illustration” that appeared originally in the William Randolph Hearst publication New York Journal-American newspaper during the 1920s or 1930s.

Three Stages of Life

Artist: Nell Brinkley

A large American impressionist oil painting by the well listed illustrator Edmund Davenport. A frequent cover artist for a number of Golden Age of Illustration glossy magazine titles, Davenport excelled at this manner of romancing the celebratory moments of life without resorting to obvious sentimentalism. This well realized and luminous work utilizes an impasto technique and a lush fall color palette and was used as the cover for the November 1928 Thanksgiving cover for The American Magazine.

Thanksgiving Day Harvest

Artist: Edmund Davenport

Pulp illustrator James Lunnon created this oil on canvas painting of Norma Shearer for the September 1935 issue of Movies Magazine. The hair and styling seem to date this to the mid 1930s-the height of Shearer’s renown as the Queen of MGM, a title bestowed upon her in 1927 when she married Irving Thalberg. Unusually […]

A Smiling Norma Shearer

Artist: James Lunnon

A dashing original pastel illustration, a scarce surviving Golden Age of Hollywood cover portrait of the lovely Marion Davies. Davies, a true film legend, is captured in an opulent and unabashedly art deco pose by frequent tinsel-town illustrator Charles Gates Sheldon. This large and inventive work was used as the March 1936 cover of “Movie Classic Magazine”. Pastel is in a fine original state of conservation and framed and matted behind glass in an an ornate gesso period antique frame.

A Dashing Marion Davies

Artist: Charles Sheldon

Joseph Pignone created this haunting and just mesmerizing gouache illustration painting for the July 1934 cover of Radio-Craft magazine. In this visually commanding original cover illustration from the machine age era of science and industry and modernist design aesthetics, a blind flapper girl with short bobbed hair holds a radio device that was created to guide the blind. Includes a printers proof tear sheet of the published magazine.

Radio Device Guides The Blind

Artist: Joseph Pignone

This original 1920s oil on board by Henry Soulen was likely an interior spot illustration which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. The colorful, boldly painted, Orientalist scene shows a rickshaw and two figures in heated conversation in front of gates of what appears to be San Francisco’s Chinatown. Housed in a simple, original-to-the-painting wood […]

The Rickshaw

Artist: Henry Soulen

A whimsical and highly stylized 1926 original illustration by Brooklyn New York artist Clarence “Polly” Hill. An 18th Century Style French corseted Courtesan and her attendant. This work was seemingly originally intended for a perfume or toiletry commission. Similar in style to Brunellesci, George Lepape, Eduardo Benito, George Plank and Erte whose work appeared in such periodicals as Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines.

18th Century Courtesan

Artist: Clarence Polly Hill

« Previous Page