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!
Erté, often called the father of Art Deco, described the style as “the confluence of Cubism and Art Nouveau.” Nowhere is that combination more clearly seen than in this gouache on board illustration painting, which appeared as the October 1923 “Annual Fall Fashion” cover of Harper’s Bazar. In “Les Parfums” a dramatic figure, costumed in an […]
Artist: Erte
This important original gouache painting by Erté, the father of Art Deco, was created as a cover illustration for Harper’s Bazaar and was published in December 1932. Erté had a more than twenty year association with the magazine, and during that period created upwards of two hundred covers for the title, defining their sophisticated take on fashion and high […]
Artist: Erté
Rolf Armstrong created this Western-themed pin-up cowgirl pastel for the Brown & Bigelow Calendar Company in the early 1950s. The adorable Americana image was published as a calendar with the titles Come And Get It!, and Soups On! This original artwork has tremendous electric cobalt blue coloring as the artist captured the last fleeting minutes of light, imagining a dreamy, well-realized, wide […]
Artist: Rolf Armstrong
A luminious beautiful original published mixed medium calendar illustration which appeared with the title Evening Reveries in the 1921 “Indian Maids” calendar line, for Gerlach-Barklow of Joliet Illinois. This was created by James Arthur who worked in a style like that of of L. Goddard, where a base photograph was lavishly over-painted by the artist […]
Artist: James Arthur
A beautiful and delicately rendered oil on canvas painting of a pensive lovelorn flapper girl in pearls which appeared as cover art for The Redbook Magazine, September, 1927. A lovely golden age of illustration published example by the noted female artist and illustrator Edna Crompton. The artist worked prolifically creating calendar art glamour images for […]
Artist: Edna Crompton
A handsome interior illustration by the Austrian-born female artist and illustrator Tracy Porter Rudd, which appeared as a bookplate with the title “But still I love to think in some Dream-Aiden She wanders…”, for the poem “Pearls” in The Ring of Love and Other Poems by Brookes More, Boston: Cornhill Publishing, (1923). The artist settled […]
Artist: Tracy Porter Rudd
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
A stunning, patriotic World War II era pastel by famed American illustrator Bradshaw Crandell. This appeared as the cover of the April, 1942 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. Intriguingly, posed in the Navy uniform was a young Yale Law student and male model named Gerald Ford, who would go on to be the 38th president of the United States. The pretty […]
Artist: Bradshaw Crandell
A spectacular, large format, science fiction painting by Dean Ellis which was first used as the paperback cover for the 1970 Corgi published compilation of science fiction writing, SF-5 New Writings in Science Fiction, one of a series of 30 British science fiction anthologies released from 1964 to 1977 under the successive editorships of […]
Artist: Dean Ellis
