Grapefruit Moon Gallery

Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration

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!

An unusual mid-century modern impressionist oil on canvas dated 1954 by well listed Minnesota painter and WPA muralist Dewey Albinson. A colorful view of a colorful space in the town Cocula, Jalisco, Mexico (where the artist lived for a time) titled The Yellow House. Painted in a dramatic and well realized impasto technique with wildly executed colors and a strong sense of composition and harmony. In original painted wide profile WPA aesthetic rough wood frame with exhibition tag on verso pine stretchers.

The Yellow House

Artist: Dewey Albinson

A poignant, large and decorative mural which reflects upon the devastation and loss caused by the Hartford, Connecticut floods of 1936. Workers from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) program provided flood relief, patrolling city streets, and rescuing Hartford residents in row boats. This large iconic artwork captures the Great Depression’s bleak urgency and despair in muted banal tones from within the temporary government shelter with newly widowed survivors and children reeling in the devastation.

After The Flood

Artist: Alton Tobey

A dazzling 1920s art deco illustration painting of a beautifully costumed, formally attired maiden at an evening summertime patio engagement. Work is stylistically mindful of Edward Eggleston and Gene Pressler who created countless similar fanciful colorful and ornamental images for calendar companies of the era. It is our belief that this too was a published calendar image. Work is beautifully matted and framed in a handsome gesso art deco period frame.

A Summer Time Fete

Artist: Eyre

A delightful original circa 1915-1925 gouache commercial illustration of unknown use and origin, showing a well articulated Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman and an Indian Chief in traditional headdress, both on horseback, envisioned in the vast expanses of The Canadian Rocky Mountains. This fine old gouache illustration painting is framed in a handsome wide profile antique period frame.

R.C.M.P. & Indian Chief

Artist: Unknown

A large ethereal and transcendent fantasy themed pastel by Frederick Stuart Church firmly planted in the then dominant Art Nouveau movement. Four angelic maidens emerge from graceful flowing lines conjured mid flight, the artwork highlights the artist’s soothing and decorative palette and imaginative sense of composition.

Four Celestial Angels

Artist: Frederick Stuart Church

A smartly rendered pin-up girl gag watercolor cartoon for Esquire Magazine by noted African American cartoon artist and illustrator E. Simms Campbell. Gag features a Bedouin trader desert scene with a harem girl, tagline reads “Personally, I think the camel is a much smarter buy”. Work is ink stamped by Esquire Magazine on the verso and signed by the artist lower right.

The Camel is a Smarter Buy

Artist: E. Simms Campbell

A dazzling and scarce surviving commercial pin-up illustration by Pearl Frush Brudon, a successful female illustrator who worked in gouache and watercolors with a unique and spectacular photo realism to her works. A lovely red headed seductress of the 1940s appears in soft focus in this luminous work, signed lower right with the artist’s married name.

Glamorous Beauty in Soft Focus

Artist: Pearl Frush

Featuring a Depression-era machinist at work creating a Pratt & Whitney aircraft engine, this 1940 artwork by WPA artist Alton Tobey combines the unusual muted palate and composition of the regionalist movement with the dystopian feel of the surrealists. This powerful oil on canvas was created for the East Hartford Pratt & Whitney plant, and presents a deeply moving picture of industrialism in the lead up to World War II.

WPA Machinist

Artist: Alton Tobey

A rare surviving cover painting by Harold H.W. McCauley for the September 1938 edition of Fantastic Adventures; Volume #1 issue #5. This is likely the earliest commissioned pulp cover illustration by the artist. A classic art deco depiction of the perils of the near future space age, as envisioned in the campy, naive era of the 1930s. The mild bondage, damsel in distress content provided an additional titillating shock at the newsstands which carried this early pulp/science fiction title.

Futurist Raygun Firefight

Artist: Harold McCauley

 

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