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 tawdry and seductive original artwork was illustrated for use as the cover of the 1951 Cameo Books title The Loves of Alice Brandt, part of the publisher’s “love fiction” line. Cameo was an imprint of Detective House Publishers in New York which was a major producer of digest sized pulp novels during the period when this first appeared […]
Artist: Unidentified American Illustrator
From the estate of legendary Ziegfeld Follies photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston comes this portrait of Follies showgirl Naomi Johnston. Noted illustrator J. Knowles Hare was commissioned by impresario Flo Ziegfeld to create pastel illustrations of Ziegfeld’s glorified American girls as they were captured by photographer A.C. Johnston, for a variety of display and publicity uses. The finished pastel […]
Artist: J. Knowles Hare
Grapefruit Moon Gallery just unearthed a small collection of original Campbell’s Soup Kids illustrations. These appeared as print ads in countless American mainstream publications such as The Saturday Evening Post in the 1930s. In this offering a Dolly Dingle character Campbell’s Soup Kid is putting the finishing touches on his or her soapbox derby bi-plane early aviation age-inspired racing car. Nicely matted and framed behind glass and ready to hang.
Artist: School of Grace Drayton
Grapefruit Moon Gallery is delighted to offer a fresh-to-the-market macabre oil on canvas pulp cover painting by Rafael DeSoto which appeared on the June, 1948 issue of Dime Mystery Magazine – The Magazine of Weird Mystery. The darkly dramatic scene shows a green skeleton in formal magician’s costume pulling a hot blonde number out of […]
Artist: Rafael Desoto
A large, dazzling, spicy pulp, science fiction, space girl painting by Gabriel Mayorga, which appeared on the cover of the second issue of Super Science Stories in May, 1940. Very loosely illustrating the interior story “Juice” by L. Sprague De Camp, whose slug is worth repeating here in full… They discovered a new game in Lunar Center – a form of ping-pong, […]
Artist: Gabriel Mayorga
An odd interior illustration by the prolific American illustrator Fredric Varady, this large scale painting accompanied a story titled “The Payoff” on page 45 of the April 1950 issue of an as-of-yet unidentified mainstream American magazine. This classic depiction of post-WWII co-eds takes the buttoned up wholesome style of Cold War Americana to an almost surreal extreme. The scene shows emotions […]
Artist: Fredric Varady
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 […]
Artist: Alfred Statler
A deftly rendered precise original gouache painting from 1937 used for a poster designed for a South Kensington, England Science Museum show. Signed Eileen McKinney on the verso and dated April 3, 1937. The work is entrenched with imagery inspired by the ongoing industrial revolution which was occurring throughout much of the world and captures the public’s fascination with the machine, science and industry as they were to intersect in what has become known as “The Machine Age”. The artist uses elements of Russian Constructivist poster design which emphasizes the particular material properties of an object added with it’s three dimensional spatial presence. This design aesthetic was very tied into Industry and Modernism and became harmonious with the graphics and imagery associated with The Machine Age.
Artist: Eileen McKinney
A rare surviving pastel by the prolific and inventive early pin-up artist James Ross Bryson. Bryson defined Art Nouveau feminine beauty with his Edwardian views of corseted and lavishly attired, erotic, and bold anti-Victorian maidens. A staff artist for the Thos. D Murphy calendar co., his work also appeared on postcards, advertisements, and magazine covers. Bryson’s strong use of color, and stylized depictions of feminine glamour were heavily influential on art deco pastel artists like Rolf Armstrong, Earl Moran and Zoe Mozert.
Artist: J. Ross Bryson
A pristine and important surviving Henry Clive illustration painting that appeared as the cover for the July 16, 1933 edition of The American Weekly, a Randolph Hearst publication. The magazine often commissioned Clive to create serialized images of enchantresses that shared a thematic thread. In this case, exotic maidens in the crossfire of cupid’s bow. Our […]
Artist: Henry Clive
