Sorry, It's Sold

Welcome to Grapefruit Moon Gallery. Here you will find an archived visual history of past sales. Pretty to look at, some are quite old; but when they're in here, consider them sold!

A sharp, scathing political commentary on the heartlessness of tycoons, barons and monopolists. Depicting a fat cat industrialist sitting on top of the world wih his east coast riches dreaming from behind binoculars of otherworldly conquests as he crushes the masses beneath him. A commsissioned illustration presumably for an early issue of Life Magazine, the image captures with wonderful humor the anti-Eastern, trust-busting late Progressive culture of the early 20th century. Work is beautifully framed and matted.

Fat Cat On Top Of the World

Artist: Orson Lowell

This is a most unusual screen printed serigraph created with the pochoir technique. This original mixed media work features a severe high art deco scene and is pencil signed by the very well listed Vogue magazine cover artist Helen Dryden. Beautifully framed in a handsome gesso period original 1930s art deco frame.

Dandy with Top Hat and Rose

Artist: Helen Dryden

This large and colorful noir montage by Alexander Sharpe Ross was created as an interior illustration for a mid 1950’s American mainstream slick magazine. Ross was a leading American illustrator of the time with work featured on the covers of Good Housekeeping, The Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Journal and Colliers. Along with a handful of key illustrators — Coby Whitmore, John Whitcomb, Al Parker, and Norman Rockwell — Ross helped create an indelible image of Americans in the post WWII decades.

Mid-Century Voodoo Doll

Artist: Alex Ross

A spicy-pulp genre, risque, color pin-up illustration by Bob Holaday titled Yeh! Cancel Volume 3-4-5-6-7-8-9… This would appear to be an interior gag cartoon for a Titters or Eyeful type girly magazine, known for iconic cheesecake and military humor and pin-up nose-art images, and wildly popular from the 1930s Jazz Age through the post World War II era.

Yeh! Cancel Volume 2-3-4…

Artist: Bob Holaday

A beautiful and serene commissioned pastel portrait of the young, wealthy blue blood high society beauty N.H. Fill. American illustrators often subsidized their earnings by taking lucrative portrait commissions from wealthy New York City Industrial Revolution aristocratic patrons. Often these jobs found the artists depicting the heiresses as glamour girl beauties in stylized, iconic, modern fashion. Gifted artist and illustrator Haskell Coffin excelled at this sort of beauty, and was best known as a cover artist contributing covers for countless American magazines including The Saturday Evening Post. His wholesome American stylized beauties also graced many Calendars for The Thos D. Murphy Calendar Company and other early twentieth century companies.

A Demure Society Girl In Pastel

Artist: Haskell Coffin

A large mid-1950’s calendar girl pin-up pastel that was commissioned by the Shaw-Barton Calendar Company for one of their wildly successful and genre changing “Sketchbook” style 12 page pin-up calendars. Knute “K.O.” Munson executed many pastels for the Brown & Bigelow Calendar Company during the 1940’s and then Shaw-Barton. He later went on to become a successful cheesecake pin-up photographer during illustration arts lean years of the 1960’s, a charmed life to be sure.

The Model as Artist

Artist: K. O. Munson

A defining patriotic themed large original pastel by the father of American Pin-up Rolf Armstrong created for the Brown & Bigelow Calendar company. A fetching bathing beauty with modern features and build strikes a celebratory pose in front of a red, white and blue beach umbrella in this World War II-era pin-up In The Pink. The model was Margery Crampton and the appeal of this bright large work is universal.

In The Pink

Artist: Rolf Armstrong

A fantastic WPA-themed interior illustration from the February 1931 issue of American Magazine. A Union president riles up a group of miners for an epic David versus Goliath style battle, from the seat of a stylish touring coupe. Herbert Paus was a gifted and prolific illustrator, known for his highly technical & visionary watercolor industrial illustrations. He designed World War One posters and illustrated numerous covers for Liberty, Popular Science, Life, Delineator, & Collier’s magazines. Like Edward Penfield, Paus was for many years an illustrator for Hart Shaffner and Marx clothiers. An enthusiastic modernist, he worked prolifically creating defining and iconic images of American industrialization. His commissions included Goodyear Tires and Willy’s Automobiles.

Rallying the Miners

Artist: Herbert Paus

A bright, fresh and new to the market original pastel pin-up illustration by Earl Steffa Moran, comissioned for a late 1940s Brown & Bigelow calendar. A winsome young pretty idealized redhead in a Hawaiian flavored sarong. 2 small printed B & B marked calendars featuring “Feature Attraction” are included with sale. Pastel is properly lined and behind glass in a fine museum quality handsome gold gilt carved frame.

Feature Attraction

Artist: Earl Moran

A dark and eerily erotic oil on canvas nude with orientalist slant. The work has a verso dedication by the artist Fred Page Craft dated 1926. An exotic Moorish/East Indian Orientalist Princess depicted as a “spicy pulp” blood boiling enchantress. Craft worked as cover artist for pulp magazine Black Mask and contributed a cover for Country Gentleman in 1923. This appears to have been created as a cover for an as of yet identified spicy pulp publication. In the dedication, the artist says of the work “This little half cast might be the finest thing I shall ever paint.”

Erotic Orientalist Moor Princess

Artist: Fred Page Craft

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