Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
In this nostalgic themed oil and graphite on board, Bill Medcalf offers a view of a sleigh arriving at a rural family home. Evoking memories of ancestral Christmases past, the scene features a smiling group of three generations of kin enjoying a snowy morning. The mustached man and woman holding a baby are featured in many images created by Medcalf, and presumably these were intended to become a year long calendar, which tells a story of a family through time.
Artist: William Medcalf
An inventive and unique hand crafted Holiday Seasons Greeting Card from the F. Burtis Clayton Company who we believe were a commercial airbrush art studio. The cover features a streamlined airbrushed painting of a modernist silhouetted cityscape with planes, trains and automobiles ushering in the machine age. Nicely framed, this opens to reveal text and New Year’s wishes as would a more typical holiday card.
Artist: Unknown
Capitalizing on the mid-1950s nostalgia for a lost vision of the American heartland, William Medcalf presents a view of a 19th century midwest barn dance, with smiling couples who appear plucked straight of out of the 1955 Academy Award winning musical Oklahoma!. This large, colorful, highly expressive oil on board with graphite highlights was created as the final preliminary painting for a published Brown & Bigelow calendar image. During the 50s, Bil Medcalf was known as one of the company’s star illustrators, and created numerous 12 page calendar series based around themes of classic Americana.
Artist: William Medcalf
During the 50s, Bil Medcalf was one of Brown & Bigelow’s star illustrators, creating 12 page calendar series based around themes of classic Americana. Here, he evokes a classic 4th of July celebration with revelers enjoying a day at Riverside Park. From the soldier checking out the ravishing redhead disembarking her carriage, to the new parents cooing over their baby buggy, the scene evokes a vision of a simpler time, and a patriotic and nostalgic sense of 19th century America.
Artist: William Medcalf
This nostalgic oil and graphite on illustration board, offers a peek into the early days of automotive touring. Bill Medcalf created this as a final presentation painting for one of Brown & Bigelow’s historically themed 12 month Americana calendars. In their finest Sunday clothes, a family taking a jaunt in their 1908-era Ford Model T find themselves lost on a country road. Bringing many of the classic archetypes of early motoring together, the male driver of the car refuses to look at the map his wife is consulting, while a farmer (who has likely never seen a car before) directs them in exactly the opposite direction than they were headed.
Artist: William Medcalf
The Light of New York by Walter Dean Goldbeck was created as a full page color advertisement that ran in The Saturday Evening Post for General Electric. The inspired and almost transcendentally captivating image would later become a Judge Magazine cover (August 1, 1914) under the title “The Spirit of New York”. The image, which features a mischievous goddess sprinkling moonlight down onto the city below also captured the imagination of music publishers Fred Fischer, who used it as a sheet music cover for his composition “I Found a Rose in the Devil’s Garden.”
Artist: Walter Dean Goldbeck
This large and luminous oil on canvas by Charles E. Chambers was created most likely as an interior story illustration for The Saturday Evening Post. Though the piece is unsigned, it contains all of the characteristics of Chambers work, and is undoubtedly an example of his glossy magazine socialites. Dating to about 1930, the scene features a number of refined jazz age beauties in modest yet flapper inspired apparel enjoying a garden teatime with a dapper suitor.
Artist: Charles Edward Chambers
A recently discovered radiant C.1934 pastel portrait by Rolf Armstrong of the beautiful and glamorous and tragically short lived Hollywood film legend Carole Lombard. This work was never published, it was likely proposed as a cover for Modern Screen magazine. A luminous and large pastel on illustration board, handsomely matted and framed behind glass, a fresh never before on the market rare and important offering.
Artist: Rolf Armstrong
A large and expressive avant-garde gouache illustration painting by noted German/American artist and illustrator Carl Link, the dancer pictured is identified on the verso as Dorsha Hayes. In the late 1920’s along with Alberto Varga, Carl Link created numerous covers for the Bernarr MacFadden publication “The Dance” capturing the art deco modernist dance movement in a lyrical and flowing inventive manner. Painting is beautifully framed and matted behind glass and is a defining example from the Charles Martignette collection.
Artist: Carl Link
A haunting and technically masterful painting on board by science fiction and pulp illustrator Hannes Bok, the first artist to win the prestigious Hugo Award. In 1954, Bok contributed this image for the back cover plate of Destiny – No.10, the early sci-fi fanzine published to coincide with the 12th World’s Science Fiction Convention in San Francisco. In that usage, the Tolkien-esque martian illustrates the the Richard E. Geis poem “Kill Me Earthmen.” This is titled on verso “Sentry” and is dated 1944 lower left.
Artist: Hannes Bok
