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Grapefruit Moon Gallery

Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration

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1950s

        A sentimental nostalgic Americana interior gouache illustration painting for the November, 1946 edition of Ladies Home Journal by Jon Whitcomb, perhaps the most accomplished artist of the era’s mainstream “glossy” illustrators. Commissioned for an interior story about a special puppy titled “A Dog Named Oliver”, with all of the trademark Whitcomb […]

A Dog Named Oliver

Artist: Jon Whitcomb

Filed Under: Illustration & Advertising Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1950s, Jon Whitcomb, Ladies Home Journal, original interior illustration, slick magazine
Added to Gallery: September 24, 2014

A large format redheaded pin up girl cover painting by the well listed female artist Ellen (E.B.) Segner, used as the cover for The Toronto Star Weekly, July 22, 1950. The artist was a prolific calendar artist who worked for the Louis F. Dow and Thomas D. Murphy Calendar Companies during the 1930s – 40s. […]

Star Weekly Cover Girl

Artist: Ellen Segner

Filed Under: Illustration & Advertising Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1950s, american, bathing beauty, bikini, E. B. Segner, magazine cover, original cover art, pin up, redhead
Added to Gallery: May 21, 2014

    This original gouache and ink Al Buell published pin up was painted in 1959 for the Brown & Bigelow Calendar Company, and first appeared as the June 1961 image for a 12 page calendar titled Buell’s Beauties. The model appears as an artist, brush in hand, in this colorful mid-century modernist calendar painting. […]

Buell’s Beauties – June 1961

Artist: Al Buell

Filed Under: Pin-Up & Glamour Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1950s, Al Buell, american, Brown & Bigelow, original calendar art, pin up, sketchbook
Added to Gallery: April 21, 2014

  Dating to 1950, this dazzling colorful original paperback cover was painted by George Gross for Quarter Books #57, The Virgin And The Barfly. Illustrating a scene from the novel by Gerald Foster (one of many likely pseudonyms of the prolific Peggy Gladdis), this is a splashy, trashy, and altogether irresistible example of sleaze paperback […]

The Virgin And The Barfly

Artist: George Gross

Filed Under: Paperback & Pulp Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1950s, american, George Gross, noir, original cover art, paperback, pin up, pulp, sleaze, The Golden Gallery
Added to Gallery: April 8, 2014

      Seen gamely climbing into a larger than life pipe threader in ballet slippers and skimpy pink apron, this redheaded Petty girl is an unlikely yet alluring gearhead. A published mixed media pin-up illustration by George Petty which appeared as a calendar for Ridgid Tools in September of 1952, as part of his […]

Miss Ridgid Tools

Artist: George Petty

Filed Under: Pin-Up & Glamour Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1950s, american, Esquire, George Petty, machine age, original calendar art, Petty Girl, pin up, redhead, ridgid tools, The Golden Gallery
Added to Gallery: April 4, 2014

This lighthearted cheesecake pin up illustration graced the January 1956 page of Bill Randall’s wildly popular “Randall’s Date Book” 12 page calendar series. For his “Date Book” commissions, Randall played off the success of the Brown & Bigelow Calendar company’s yearly Artist Sketch Pad pin up calendar, while adding his own charm and whimsy. Work […]

When Pat Goes out to Play

Artist: Bill Randall

Filed Under: Pin-Up & Glamour Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1950s, Bill Randall, cheesecake, original calendar art, pin up, The Golden Gallery
Added to Gallery: January 19, 2014

This lighthearted cheesecake pin up illustration graced the January 1957 page of Bill Randall’s wildly popular “Randall’s Date Book” 12 page calendar series. For his “Date Book” commissions, Randall played off the success of the Brown & Bigelow Calendar company’s yearly Artist Sketch Pad pin up calendar, while adding his own charm and whimsy. Working […]

A Snowball Fight With Jackie

Artist: Bill Randall

Filed Under: Pin-Up & Glamour Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1950s, Bill Randall, cheesecake, nude, original calendar art, pin up
Added to Gallery: January 19, 2014

    A large classic Americana c. 1950 oil painting on canvas created for Atlantic Petroleum by Hayden Hayden. This was likely created as a billboard advertising design. In this all-American apple pie depiction, a clean cut high school football star has attracted the interest of a pretty co-ed after being “Fixed Up For The […]

Fixed Up For Fall

Artist: Hayden Hayden

Filed Under: Illustration & Advertising Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1950s, advertising, american, Atlantic Petroleum, automobilia, autumn, football, Golden Age, Hayden Hayden, original illustration art, petroliana, sundblom shop
Added to Gallery: October 7, 2013

A lustful, original cover painting by Rudy Nappi for the 1959 Tower paperback cover titled A Strange Kind of Love, by Lawrence Block, written under his early pseudonym Sheldon Lord. Billed as a “daring tale of the love life of a writer and his most unusual mistress,” Block has described the story as that of […]

A Strange Kind Of Love

Artist: Rudy Nappi

Filed Under: Paperback & Pulp Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1950s, american, erotic, Lawrence Block, lurid, noir, original cover art, paperback, pulp, Rudy Nappi, sleaze
Added to Gallery: August 16, 2013

This collection of three published Brown & Bigelow calendar girl paintings from 1950 offers a mid-century modernist Parisian take on classic pin up art. We believe the artist to be Jean-Gabriel Domergue who was active at the time in France, creating breezy coquettish often times topless hatted sophisticates. These are signed “Ioxia of Paris” we […]

3 French Pin Up Paintings

Artist: Attributed to Domergue

Filed Under: Pin-Up & Glamour Art, Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1950s, Brown & Bigelow, Domergue, french, mid-century, nude, original calendar art, paris
Added to Gallery: August 10, 2013

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