Grapefruit Moon Gallery

Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration

1910s

A fresh to the market lovely portrait painting by Carle J. Blenner in its original to the work handsome American Arts & Crafts ornate gesso frame. This is a fine and untouched example of the artist’s preferred subject matter; female portraiture. This large oil painting finds a dazzling raven haired maiden admiring her beauty in a hand compact. Work retains its original Beard Art Gallery Minneapolis verso exhibit label and the frame is adorned with a period plaque with the artist’s name.

A Raven Haired Beauty

Artist: Carle Blenner

A delightful original pastel by Charles Sheldon of a lavishly-attired Gloria Swanson posed in the style of a Follies Showgirl, bathed in red light. Double matted and framed in a period art deco gesso wood painted frame.

Follies Girl in Red

Artist: Charles Sheldon

A large signed and dated 1917 oil on canvas by Margaret Lindsay Williams, the important Royal Academy award winning Welsh artist. Williams has the distinction of being the lone artist to have had a studio in Westminster Abbey. Along with her darkly beautiful fine art, she painted portraits of Queen Alexandria and The Prince of Wales. In 1922, amidst much hoopla, she was brought to the US to paint President Harding’s portrait. This remarkable large work bears its label from a 1917 London’s Royal Academy exhibition. This is an important large decorative dark masterwork from an artist of the utmost historical significance.

The Devil’s Daughter

Artist: Margaret Lindsay Williams

This Everett Shinn pencil & gouache artwork offers a humorous take on class relations, and seemingly, the effects of intoxication. A well-heeled gentleman is shown face down in the grass as an unflappable butler bends down to assess the situation. Shinn was renowned for his ability to capture the minute distinctions of society and debauchery, and this artwork displays his fluid and lively style.

Yes, Sir

Artist: Everett Shinn

In Willy Pogany’s dazzling oil on board artwork, an Art Nouveau maiden finds herself in the summer foliage conversing with a little bird. This whimsical scene was created for and used as the front cover of Metropolitan Magazine, July 1916. This artwork marks the best period in Pogany’s prolific and well remembered long and successful career. A stylized belle-epoque, tightly rendered work that features a vibrant color palette and intricate use of the free-flowing forms that came to define the Art Nouveau aesthetic.

The Queen of Summer

Artist: Willy Pogany

This Raphael Kirchner Ziegfeld Follies pastel is a newly unearthed piece of New York City theater history, and a once in a generation find. Part of a suite of five illustrations which feature the erotic and luminous showgirls who starred in the legendary theater revue Ziegfeld Follies and made the name synonymous with images of the most beautiful, brazen and sensuous women in early 20th century New York. This portrait of Justine Johnstone hung in the lobby of the historic Century Theater until it shut its doors in 1936.

Justine Johnstone: Ziegfeld Follies Century Girl

Artist: Raphael Kirchner

A fashionable demure art nouveau maiden with a parasol is leered at by an Edwardian gent in a wig with opera glasses in this gouache illustration which dates from 1910 – 1920. The work is unsigned and is mindful in style of the works which appeared in Vogue and Vanity Fair Magazines. This is beautifully framed in a carved wood gesso antique frame.

Admiring a Fashionable Woman

Artist: Unknown

A monumental and important original large pastel illustration on stretched canvas by James Ross Bryson, executed in 1914 for The Thos. D. Murphy Calendar Company of Red Oak Iowa under the title “Reverie in Green”. Bryson was an influential and supremely gifted and handsomely paid American Illustrator who earned a hefty $200.00 per commission for images of his risque for the day, modern enchantress themed Art Nouveau Maiden depictions. This work is housed in it’s original wide solid mahogany gold gilt lined antique frame and is properly lined behind glass.

Reverie in Green

Artist: J. Ross Bryson

A charming and vanguard view of the generation gap which incited “The Jazz Age”. Boomerang, which in the 1910s was synonymous with backfire, was a key flashpoint term of the era, since the older generation found all their efforts to instill their Victorian values on their children failed drastically. This lovely watercolor work is by Rose O’Neill, the most famous and prolific female illustrator of the early 1900’s. She is best remembered for her creation the Kewpie doll.

A Boomerang

Artist: Rose O'Neill

 

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