Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
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!
This large and evocative interior illustration by Herbert Morton Stoops was commissioned by Cosmopolitan magazine to accompany a story titled “Swans Mate” which appeared in the September 1925 edition. The briskly composed Western frontier scene shows a wild west culture war where a citified young lady encounters a rugged cowboy on the edge of the frontier. The grizzled ranch hand is either amused or annoyed with the pert, […]
Artist: Herbert Morton Stoops
This remarkable gouache pulp cover painting by Alex Schomburg appeared on the February, 1961 issue of the long running Ziff-Davis magazine Amazing Stories – Fact And Science Fiction. Though the work seems like pure fantasy at first glance, it is based on the real-life practice of both the American and Soviet space programs of sending mice, dogs, chimpanzees and animals into space to […]
Artist: Alex Schomburg
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 […]
Artist: Gordon Thomas
An original commissioned Calendar illustration by noted New York City genre illustrator Charlotte Becker. Created as calendar art most likely for The Gerlach Barklow Calendar Company Joliet Illinois. Framed in a period gesso wood frame.
Artist: Charlotte Becker
This Jean Oldham painting appeared as the cover for the April 1928 issue of The Dance magazine, showcasing the Spanish dancer and showgirl Trini in her costume from the Broadway hit “Take the Air.” The now-forgotten star shows off her opulent style and “famous feet” against a Moorish skyline in this art deco jewel of a painting. The Dance was a leading title during […]
Artist: Jean Oldham
A jovial, large format oil painting by Harold H.W. McCauley which appeared as the May 1955 cover of Imaginative Tales, a Greenleaf Publishing title. The image is a whimsical self-portrait, the artist appears as the 1950s everyman enjoying a night on the town after a hard day’s work. His wife sits atop his shoulders–a classic “Mac girl” pin-up bombshell getting […]
Artist: Harold McCauley
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 […]
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.
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.
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.
Artist: Mahlon Blaine
