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!
A sultry mixed medium paperback cover illustration by Lou Marchetti, this first appeared in 1951 as the paperback cover of Shadow Of The Mafia, aka Horns of the Devil by Louis Malley. The provocative and hard-boiled image shows an “easy loving” blonde beauty flirtatiously eying the streetwise tough Don Alberto, who lays on the bed, his enforcers […]
Artist: Lou Marchetti
A pretty Parisian showgirl is shown on her way to the Opera in this large and lovely original Pal Fried fine art oil on canvas painting. Along with his nude studies, Fried is best remembered for these lovely and provocative high-society, sophisticated yet sultry views. This remarkable example retains its somewhat garish, but now iconic, mid-century ornate frame. This is signed lower […]
Artist: Pal Fried
The Song Without Words is an original Orientalist genre painting by the American artist and illustrator Daniel Content which appeared as a full page color plate in the May 1937 issue of The Ladies Home Journal. Illustrating a story by famed early frontier woman Rose Wilder Lane, the image was published along side a caption […]
Artist: Daniel Content
Anton Otto Fischer is perhaps the Golden Age of Illustration artist most associated with maritime-genre paintings. This tense and dramatic shipwreck scene, created for the August 3, 1952 edition of The American Weekly Magazine, showcases his unique ability to show the grandeur and danger of the open water. Illustrating an interior story titled “Pulaski […]
Artist: Anton Otto Fischer
A costumed flapper girl, dressed to the nines in jazz-age fineries at a masquerade ball, is seductively caught in the light of a romantic full moon in this oil on canvas by J. Walter Wilkinson. The artist was a prominent and revered American illustrator, and we presume this to be a magazine cover for an […]
Artist: J. Walter Wilkinson
An intensely colored, dramatic and moody, mixed media illustration work by Edwin Georgi, Date With Death, which illustrated an interior story by Leslie Ford in The Saturday Evening Post. The image shows a favorite Georgi theme, the moment of discovery of betrayal in a love triangle. A complete edition of the February 12, 1949 Saturday Evening […]
Artist: Edwin Georgi
A deliriously sexy and erotically unhinged Alberto Vargas mixed media pin-up illustration for Playboy Magazine, this appeared on page 104 in the June, 1962 issue. A curvy and pretty new bride is seen in a moment of sudden clarity about to pack up for the divorce capital of the US in this spirited and brash […]
Artist: Alberto Vargas
Wouldn’t You Like To Know… is a large sultry original published pin-up calendar painting by the prolific and important American artist Fritz Willis. Willis was the last true star pin-up artist of the old guard, when illustrative pin-up reigned supreme in men’s magazines and calendars. The artist worked during the very tail end of the […]
Artist: Fritz Willis
It doesn’t get more action packed than this high drama scene of a gangster mol pin-up girl in a shoot out with an unseen mobster trying to push her out of a moving car in a seedy urban Chinatown. An original oil on board artwork by Wil Hulsey, this appeared as the cover of a 1956 issue of Guilty […]
Artist: Wil Hulsey
A boldly colored and tightly rendered likely preliminary pastel pin-up illustration by Earl Moran, showing an art deco sailor girl living the life aquatic. This dates to the late 1930s, as the outbreak of war in Europe caused both a premonition of America’s eventual involvement into what would become World War II, and a boost in industrial production (particularly shipbuilding) […]
Artist: Earl Moran
