Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
Victorian Cover Art by Archie Gunn This is a large format and racy (for the times) Victorian cover illustration for the long-running weekly periodical Truth Magazine. Created by illustrator Archie Gunn, this appeared as the cover for the January 13, 1894 edition with a title of “How Those Girls Love One Another”. Two girlfriends are […]
Artist: Archie Gunn
A large and monumental allegorical oil on canvas by Charles Allan Winter featuring a dying Roman warrior being attended to by a firey haired maiden. Work is signed by the artist “Chas. Winter 1896 Paris” lower right, an early offering from this highly regarded vanguard artist. This was presumably created while Winter was studying at the Julianne Academie of Paris, this has a wonderful Pre-Raphaelite dramatic and impacting style. The grand scale of the painting adds to its evocative epic charm.
Artist: Charles Winter
This large and luminous original watercolor painting by the famous Belgian painter Frantz Charlet dates to the turn of the 20th centuty and features a serene pastoral mother and child figural scene. Charlet, a student of the Acadeémie de Bruxelles and l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris, known for his portraiture, landscape and genre work. Along with a group of ten colleagues, Charlet founded Les XX in October 1883.
Artist: Frantz Charlet
A large original pen & ink illustration by the important Belle Epoque era poster and book illustrator Louis Rhead. This likely was done for Harper’s or Century Magazine. A great large rendering in the Art Nouveau manner and a rare surviving original illustration work by the great New York based prolific and gifted illustrator and artist.
Artist: Louis Rhead
A delicately rendered, romanticized art nouveau maiden posed with a cornucopia filled with a plentiful summer’s harvest. This original watercolor illustration painting was created by the New York illustrator, muralist and fine artist Will Hicok Low for the August 1899 cover of McClure’s Magazine – Midsummer Fiction Number. A copy of the magazine is included in the sale and the painting is handsomely framed and matted behind glass and ready to enjoy.
Artist: Will Hicok Low
A large well preserved pencil signed copper plate etching by Stephen Parrish, the celebrated artist, etcher and father of beloved American Illustrator Maxfield Parrish. Featuring a New England harbor view with a lone fisherman standing on the pier. The presence of the figure is unusual for etchings by Parrish, whose harbor landscapes rarely featured images of people. This was framed in the 1920s and retains the original unopened backing paper and a verso label from “E & A Art Shop.” The etching is signed in pencil lower right in the margin and is in an fine state of preservation. A rich impression on Japan paper in excellent condition.
Artist: Stephen Parrish
A large, Victorian era, original watercolor on illustration board by frequent LIFE Magazine illustrator, Charles Howard Johnson. This was most likely an interior, 2-page, color plate illustration for Truth Magazine. A stylized Belle Epoque, old world gondola scene. Nicely framed in a large, period, gesso wood frame.
Artist: Charles Howard Johnson
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.
Artist: Frederick Stuart Church
A large and fabulous original illustration painting by Eric Pape used in “The Fair God” by Lew Wallace as a bookplate (page 462, with the caption “She gave him the signal”).
Pape is best remembered as a prolific illustrator of children’s books and historical fantasies, as well as an artistic contributor to Scribner’s, Cosmopolitan, and Century Magazine. After opening his own illustration school in 1898, he taught N.C. Wyeth, whose style is influenced by Pape’s own.
Artist: Eric Pape
Grapefruit Moon Gallery is proud to offer the second of several original John Louis Rhead Art Nouveau/Belle Epoque-era illustrations only recently acquired from a New York estate. This large Thanksgiving Harvest goddess colorful and stylized image is titled November in pencil by the artist on the lower margin. The work is matted and framed in a large period gesso frame. This is an astonishing and rare surviving document from this American poster master. Rhead’s work appeared alongside Alphonse Mucha, Jules Cheret and Toulouse Latrec pieces in Les Maîtres de l’Affiche (Masters of Posters) folios at the turn of the last century.
Artist: Louis Rhead
