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Grapefruit Moon Gallery

Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration

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1940s

The Louis F. Dow Calendar Company of Saint Paul, Minnesota commissioned this pristine and rare surviving pin-up painting by Art Frahm for publication in their 1944 calendar line under the title “Pay Off.” The image shows an underdressed, impish redhead having an “oops” moment as she is drenched by the puppy she has just so carefully bathed. This painting is […]

Pay Off

Artist: Art Frahm

Filed Under: Pin-Up & Glamour Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1940s, art deco, Art Frahm, erotic, Golden Age, Louis F. Dow, original calendar art, original illustration art, pin up, risque, The Golden Gallery
Added to Gallery: August 2, 2016

A lurid, true crime themed, spicy pulp cover pin-up painting by George Gross featuring a bathing beauty, gun toting moll as “The Daughter of Satan,” for the March, 1948 pulp digest title Women in Crime which purported to have stories based on True Fact Detective Cases. The tagline on the cover reads “Some Women Love To […]

Daughter of Satan

Artist: George Gross

Filed Under: Paperback & Pulp Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1940s, bathing beauty, Daughter of Satan, erotic, George Gross, magazine cover, original cover art, original illustration art, pin up, pulp, risque
Added to Gallery: August 2, 2016

Fred Rodewald created this classic and exciting 1940s pulp cover painting for an as of yet unidentified Thrilling Publications Western title. The image shows a handsome cowboy returning gunfire while precariously perched on a fallen log, protecting the requisite damsel in distress. The scene is filled with tension, romance, and danger, a combination which American […]

Shootout On A Log

Artist: Fred Rodewald

Filed Under: Paperback & Pulp Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1940s, Fred Rodewald, Golden Age, magazine cover, pulp, Thrilling Publications, western americana
Added to Gallery: August 2, 2016

This exciting Western pulp oil on stretched painting appeared was created as cover art for the fall 1942 issue of the Thrilling Publications Western title Exciting Western. The scene shows a handsome cowboy and smartly attired cowgirl returning fire on unseen villains in this tautly rendered, action packed, bright and bold image. Grapefruit Moon Gallery […]

Exciting Western

Artist: Earle K. Bergey

Filed Under: Paperback & Pulp Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1940s, Golden Age, original cover art, original illustration art, pulp, western americana
Added to Gallery: August 2, 2016

Sam Cherry created this romance-themed Western  pulp painting for use as the June, 1943 cover of Thrilling Ranch Stories – Romantic Stories of The West. The image shows a pretty blonde sweetheart of the rodeo embracing a Wild West town sheriff, who grins as he contemplates his great luck. Not only did he seemingly get the girl, a bullet aimed at […]

The Sheriff’s Sweetheart

Artist: Sam Cherry

Filed Under: Illustration & Advertising Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1940s, glamour, Golden Age, magazine cover, original cover art, original illustration art, pulp, Sam Cherry, Thrilling Publications
Added to Gallery: August 2, 2016

A large and important bustling published colorful gouache illustration painting by Willy Pogany for an interior story titled “Nero’s Temple On The Nile”, which appeared in the January 12, 1947 edition of Randolph Hearst’s American Weekly Magazine. An over the top opulant Egyptian themed costumed imagining of life in ancient Rome, which appeared with the […]

Nero’s Temple On The Nile

Artist: Willy Pogany

Filed Under: Illustration & Advertising Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1940s, American Weekly, Cleopatra, egyptian, Golden Age, original illustration art, Randolph Hearst, Willy Pogany
Added to Gallery: July 26, 2016

An action packed damsel in distress fire rescue pulp cover painting by Sam Cherry for the February 1943 issue of Thrilling Ranch Stories – Romantic Stories of The West. A fearless square jawed handsome cowboy emerges from a burning building with a damsel in his arms, his pistol a blazin’, as our felled damsel struggles to regain […]

Burned Prairies

Artist: Sam Cherry

Filed Under: Paperback & Pulp Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1940s, cowboy, damsel in distress, Golden Age, magazine cover, Old West, original cover art, pulp, Sam Cherry, Thrilling Ranch, western
Added to Gallery: July 15, 2016

An unsigned oil on stretched canvas pulp cover painting for the December 1947 issue of the Thrilling Publications Western title Thrilling Western. A rugged square jawed handsome cowboy with a noose around his neck engages in a barbed wire shoot out illustrating the interior story Bullets and Salt by Bradford Scott. The stories tag-line as follows … When […]

Bullets And Salt

Artist: Sam Cherry, Atrributed

Filed Under: Paperback & Pulp Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1940s, cowboy, Golden Age, magazine cover, original cover art, original illustration art, pulp, Thrilling Western, western
Added to Gallery: July 15, 2016

A 1949 Western Americana cowgirl themed gouache on illustration board which comes directly from the archives of the 100-year-old San Francisco ad agency/lithography company “Stecher-Traung & Schmidt.” The work is in the style of George Petty, and Ben-Hur Baz. Among other noted artists Stecher-Traug employed Gil Elvgren, E.B. Segner & Mary Mayo. This commissioned illustration is dated and inkstamped in the lower corner but is unsigned. Work is beautifully framed and matted in a period ornate gesso frame.

A Cowgirl Shooter

Artist: Unknown

Filed Under: Pin-Up & Glamour Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1940s, advertising, american, cheesecake, cowgirl, illustration, original illustration art, pin up, Stecher-Traung, western
Added to Gallery: July 15, 2016

A kinetic and surrealist hypnotic work showing an African Fertility Dance that likely was a proposed cover for The American Weekly magazine, for which the artist was active in the 1940s. Inscribed Property of Andre Durenceau lower right; a jarring work by one of our favorite avant-garde art deco era illustrators. Nicely matted and framed behind glass in a period frame.

The Fertility Dance

Artist: Andre Durenceau

Filed Under: Illustration & Advertising Art
Tagged With: 1940s, american, American Weekly, Andre Durenceau, art deco, avant-garde, black magic, exoticism, magazine cover, muralist, nude
Added to Gallery: April 21, 2016

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