Grapefruit Moon Gallery

Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration

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 rare surviving original cover illustration for Rogue For Me Magazine by Lloyd Rognan for an July 1956 edition. Rognan had a long and prolific career as an illustrator , he studied with an early WPA art student project, contributed regularily for Stars and Stripes. Later his science fiction pulp artwork appeared as covers for such publications as Fate, Imagination and ImaginativeTales, and other sci-fi pulp magazines exploiting the “pre Apollo” moon mission space travel craze. In the 60’s, Rognan was also a regular staff artist for Brown & Bigelow and created a hillbilly humor line called Corn Squeezins.

That Wicked Cancan

Artist: Lloyd Rognan

A rare and outstanding situational pin-up painting used as calendar art for The Louis F. Dow Calendar Co., circa 1940’s- 50’s. Image is playfully titled Snowshoes it also appeared as a calendar print titled Alask-Ann. This was purchased by a gentleman the day he got back from the Viet Nam War in the early 1970’s. The Dow Calendar Company rented a downtown Saint Paul hotel and sold off their paintings and original calendar art at $50.00 a painting! This is a major find and has never been on the market since it was purchased thirty years ago. He created the “Wonder Bread Girl” in the 1950’s using his daughter Nancy as his model. His portrait of President Dwight D. Eisenhower is in the Smithsonian institution in Washington D.C.

Alask-Ann

Artist: Vaughan Bass

This is the first of two provocative, cheeky, and sexy large nude original pin-ups we are offering by the classic American illustrator Ren Wicks. Wicks, a pin-up artist who was frequently commissioned to create advertising art for aviation and wartime industries, has been called the master of “wings and women.” This large and lovely gouache on illustration board features the infamous sharpshooter Annie Oakley re-imagined as a voluptuous reclining beauty. This painting is perfect in theme and scale for a tavern, pool room, or den.

Annie Oakley

Artist: Ren Wicks

A genre defining original illustration painting for the October 1956 edition of Imagination Science Fiction for the interior story by Edmond Hamilton titled Citadel Of The Star Lords. By Lloyd Rognan (1923-2005) an Original oil on illustration board depicting ufo’s , rayguns, mayhem and all things lurid sci-fi, set amongst the ruins of a town center square anytown USA circa 1950’s. The artist recently passed away and many works were recently auctioned off directly from his estate. This to my eyes was one of the defining work by this highly regarded and frequently published illustrator.

Citadel Of The Star Lords

Artist: Lloyd Rognan

A genuinely magical illustration from the 1940 John C. Winston Co.’s publication of the Oscar Wilde classic The Happy Prince and Other Tales. This watercolor on board is a colorful and evocative rendering of the climactic scene from Wilde’s emotionally complex parable of Christian love. The illustration depicts the selfish giant gazing upon the boy who warmed his heart, as the boy bleeds from stigmata-like wounds. Everett Shinn was the youngest of a loosely associated group of New York-based social realist illustrators who were termed, by their critics, the Ashcan school, for their gritty style, often ugly depictions of humanity, and fixation on urban scenes. Shinn’s illustrators today are revered for the manner in which these themes are juxtaposed with gentle beauty.

The Selfish Giant

Artist: Everett Shinn

An important and rare original cover illustration for Vogue Magazine by Eduardo Benito who did his first cover for Vogue in November 1921 . Along with George LePape , Helen Dryden , and George Plank, Benito was a frequent cover contributor and really came into his own and helped define the late 1920’s Jazz Age sophisticated angular geometric look.

Art Deco Cover for Vogue Magazine

Artist: Eduardo Benito

Original cover art from a story by Private Robert Ross Carney from the pages of the July 1972 Adventure for Men. Story is titled The Battle The Big Brass Bungled. Artwork is a gouache on illustration board and nicely matted and framed. A genre defining noir World War II daring rescue depiction with the required damsel in distress and the menacing SS officers getting foiled by sheer tenacity and by the element of suprise. ( Not unlike a vintage Hogan’s Heroes T.V. episode…) By the well listed illustrator and pulp cover artist George Gross.

Battle The Big Brass Bungled

Artist: George Gross

A presumed cover painting for a 1915-1920 edition of a young peoples magazine most likely St. Nicholas for Boys and Girls (I have yet to locate the actual magazine this was used for). A confident Edwardian attired young lady enjoying the active life as was prescribed in such periodicals after the turn of the last century and post Victorian idealized, more petite, feminine beauty. Looks like the work of Charles Relyea or perhaps Norman Price another possible candidate would be Charles Chase Emerson all of whom did covers in numorous periodicals in this genre.

A Young Woman Sailor

Artist: Unknown

A very stylized and decidedly mid-century modern period original gouache illustration by Edwin Georgi for an interior story in Redbook Magazine titled on verso Encounter on the Beach. Estate stamped and signed upper right, work is beautifully matted and framed. A defining example.

Encounter on the Beach

Artist: Edwin Georgi

 

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