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 striking in technique light and shadow in composition rare surviving original pastel on illustration board by Earl MacPherson created in the 1940s for a Patriotic pin-up brochure with text on how to survive an enemy military air raid and subsequent blackout. We will be selling all of the pastels from this important commissioned homeland wartime “Blackout Brochure”. This was a cheeky, lighthearted morale boosting effort making great use of double entendre and the talents of MacPherson to fight fear during World War II.

Incendiary Bombs

Artist: Earl MacPherson

An electric in composition rare surviving original pastel on illustration board by Earl MacPherson created in the 1940s for a Patriotic pin-up brochure with text on how to survive an enemy military air raid and subsequent blackout. We will be selling all of the pastels from this important commissioned homeland wartime “Blackout Brochure”. This was a cheeky, lighthearted morale boosting effort making great use of double entendre and the talents of MacPherson to fight fear during World War II.

Comfort Beside You

Artist: Earl MacPherson

A large and radiant calendar girl pin-up pastel by Billy Devorss created for The Thomas D. Murphy Calendar Company of Red Oak Iowa. Devorss had a studio in New York City in the Beaux Arts Building and worked for many Calendar Companies of the day creating large format pastel illustrations of modernist fashionable attired heart-breakers in an inventive art deco manner.

A Bathing Beauty in Yellow

Artist: Billy DeVorss

George Petty’s enormously successful career as an illustrator began in the mid-1920s painting magazine covers and images of beautiful girls for calendars. The creation that made him legendary debuted in the first issue of Esquire magazine in 1933. The “Petty Girl,” with her dreamy curves and witty banter, quickly became a popular symbol of the American male’s feminine ideal.Esquire produced two other calendars by Petty in 1955 and 1956. This painting appeared as the September Petty Girl in the 1956 Esquire calendar. Rendered in watercolor on board, nicely framed and ready to hang.

Petty Girl, September 1956

Artist: George Petty

Grapefruit Moon Gallery is ecstatic to offer the original pair of carved Hondurous Mahogany decorative column panels that were built for the tavern in Hollywood California’s legendary Masquers Club on 6735 Yucca Street. These Afro-American nymphs were carved by the noted WPA muralist and woodcarver Stuart Holmes. We purchased these with the two large original Henry Clive Masquers Club mural paintings we offered and sold earlier this year.

Masquer’s Club Nude Panels

Artist: Stuart Holmes

An original graphite preliminary pin-up sketch by Rolf Armstrong of his favorite pin-up model Jewel Flowers. Nicely framed and matted with an original color snapshot of Jewel as posed by Armstrong in a wide brimmed straw sun hat from this specific setting, (likely taken by Rolf Armstrong himself). From the Jewel Flowers estate, gifted to Mike Wooldridge the co-author of Pin-up Dreams.

Jewel Flowers in a Sun Hat

Artist: Rolf Armstrong

Grapefruit Moon Gallery is ecstatic to offer Zoe Mozert’s 1950 pastel “Song of the Desert”. This is by all accounts the artist’s crowning achievement and most famous image. A luminous masterwork from the golden age of American pin up, it is one of the most widely circulated and printed pin-up images of all time. Enticingly, this is a self-portrait of Mozert, who made a name for herself both as the most famous female American illustrator of her day and a frequent model for her erotically charged illustrations.

Song of the Desert

Artist: Zoe Mozert

A spectacularly alluring, inquisitive and beautiful view of Myrna Loy, captured in her pre-code early career by the master of Hollywood photography George Hurrell. In a gentle sepia on a large format double weight semi-gloss paperstock, Hurrell captures the beauty of the young Myrna Loy, with her effortless art deco style, and emboldened flapper sensibility. This is blindstamped by Hurrell lower right, and inkstamped on verso. This is a hand printed gallery portrait never intended for distribution, and is a moving rare portrait.

Myrna Loy

Artist: George Hurrell

This touching, personal charcoal portrait by Rolf Armstrong features his long-time housekeeper and personal friend Rebekah Louisa Hooper–Ma Hoops–in a lovingly rendered Hawaiian islands view, with traditional plumeria tucked behind her ear. Hooper worked at Armstrong’s homes in Honolulu Hawaii and Marblehead Massachusetts, becoming a fixture in his tight knit circle.

Ma Hoops

Artist: Rolf Armstrong

This is a unique and intriguing pair of original illustrations by Rolf Armstrong, created over the July 4th weekend in 1941, at the Brown & Bigelow holiday company retreat at Breezy Point Lodge in Northern Minnesota. Armstrong, and his favorite model, Jewel Flowers, were celebrities at the event, and Armstrong was called upon to create this impromptu view of Jewel in all-American sporting poses, as an instructional event. Jewel sat lakeside modeling, as Rolf depicted her first beneath a tent, then with a dog, then finally, holding a newly caught fish, similar to the prized walleye she caught at Breezy Point that weekend. These two pieces provide a rare look at the process Armstrong used to develop his iconic pin up creations, and come from the estate of Mike Wooldridge the co-author of “Pin-up Dreams” the well regarded and thoughtfully compiled monograph on the artist.

Jewel Flowers at Breezy Point

Artist: Rolf Armstrong

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