Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
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.
This feverish and provocative original illustration by Mahlon Blaine appears to date to the late 1930s, when the artist was mining the myth of Aphrodite for Nova Venus, a series of artworks illustrating a poem written by Blaine that interrogates the relationship between love, lust, and modernism. Characteristically dark, and replete with complicated and even bizarre symbolism, this gouache and ink painting explores fertility, […]
Artist: Mahlon Blaine
A haunting, iconic and important, large format painting by Cecil Calvert Beall created for an American World War II Army Air Forces poster titled Bomb’s Away!. The backing paper on this watercolor on board still houses the posed source photo, (likely taken by Beall himself) of his son Charles Beall, posed as a B-17G Flying Fortress […]
Artist: C.C. Beall
An early dated 1886 arwork by Will Hicok Low, in deep sepia monochromatic tones with the young winged lovers Cupid & Psyche in amorous embrace.
Artist: Will Hicock Low
The Song Without Words is an original Orientalist genre painting by the American artist and illustrator Daniel Content which appeared as a full page color plate in the May 1937 issue of The Ladies Home Journal. Illustrating a story by famed early frontier woman Rose Wilder Lane, the image was published along side a caption […]
Artist: Daniel Content
Anton Otto Fischer is perhaps the Golden Age of Illustration artist most associated with maritime-genre paintings. This tense and dramatic shipwreck scene, created for the August 3, 1952 edition of The American Weekly Magazine, showcases his unique ability to show the grandeur and danger of the open water. Illustrating an interior story titled “Pulaski […]
Artist: Anton Otto Fischer
A costumed flapper girl, dressed to the nines in jazz-age fineries at a masquerade ball, is seductively caught in the light of a romantic full moon in this oil on canvas by J. Walter Wilkinson. The artist was a prominent and revered American illustrator, and we presume this to be a magazine cover for an […]
Artist: J. Walter Wilkinson
An intensely colored, dramatic and moody, mixed media illustration work by Edwin Georgi, Date With Death, which illustrated an interior story by Leslie Ford in The Saturday Evening Post. The image shows a favorite Georgi theme, the moment of discovery of betrayal in a love triangle. A complete edition of the February 12, 1949 Saturday Evening […]
Artist: Edwin Georgi
An eerie underwater view of two Navy Frogman divers, this gouache cover painting by Ed Lafferty appeared on the cover of the August, 1951 edition of Popular Mechanics. The scene illustrates an interior story that showcases the groundbreaking movie set design work of Louis Witte, Hollywood’s “ace authority on celluloid warfare.” Handsomely matted and […]
Artist: Ed Lafferty
Dating to the mid-1920s, this lavishly colored and provocatively composed gouache painting by the highly regarded illustrator Willy Pogany is a rare surviving example of his commissioned silent film artwork. During the roaring ’20s, Pogany, known as one of the most prolific and inventive artists of the decade, worked with a number of […]
Artist: Willy Pogany
A sentimental nostalgic Americana interior gouache illustration painting for the November, 1946 edition of Ladies Home Journal by Jon Whitcomb, perhaps the most accomplished artist of the era’s mainstream “glossy” illustrators. Commissioned for an interior story about a special puppy titled “A Dog Named Oliver”, with all of the trademark Whitcomb […]
Artist: Jon Whitcomb
