Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
A large, signed, oil on canvas painting by prolific and influential New York City illustrator James Montgomery Flagg titled “At The Stork Club”. A prohibition/speakeasy-era, exhibited, large format illustration inviting us in behind the doors of New York City’s legendary Stork Club. Exhibited in 1976 at the Columbus Museum of Arts and Crafts in Columbus Georgia as well as the Berry-Hill Galleries on 5th Avenue in New York.
Artist: James Montgomery Flagg
A luminous and glowing, glamour girl painting by the well-listed, prolific pin-up illustrator and Hollywood portrait artist Edward Runci. This fine oil on canvas features a Haddon Sundblom / Gil Elvgren inspired color palette and painterly technique. A formally posed beauty queen with a little bit of mischief in her eyes, in white gloves and fur wrap with a purple orchid from an admirer.
Artist: Edward Runci
A rare and fabulous surviving commissioned calendar art pin-up painting by Al Buell titled on verso A Perfect Pair. From a series of paintings Buell did for Brown & Bigelow, The Playmate Series. This was for the month of October and dates to the late 1940s. Buell worked with Gil Elvgren in the Sundblom studios in Chicago and his accounts included Coca-Cola. His oils are among the best in the genre, they capture the pretty girl next door (albeit generally under-dressed) and have a wholesomeness rare in the pin-up form.
Artist: Al Buell
A hauntingly beautiful, erotically charged, reclining nude pastel by Rolf Armstrong from his very best period. This nude was never published and dates from right around 1930; a seductive light and shadow meditation that finds Armstrong contemplating the “temptation of allure” and “the allure of temptation” in this jazz-age, art deco erotic rendering of a veiled showgirl finding the light.
Artist: Rolf Armstrong
A dark, masterfully suspenseful, photo-realist in technique painting by noted American illustrator and avant-garde filmmaker Douglass Crockwell. This menacing oil on board was likely used as an interior illustration in an American slick magazine such as The Saturday Evening Post, or Colliers. Crockwell was a gifted and precise artist, his advertising accounts included Coca-Cola, GE and US Steel.
Artist: Douglass Crockwell
A deftly rendered, intricate, highly decorative oil on canvas painting by noted Brandywine School illustrator Arthur E. Becher, a student of Howard Pyle. An East Indian Minstrel performs magic feats to the delight of his adoring harem in this Orientalist Golden Age of Illustration depiction. Becher’s work appeared in numerous magazine titles after the turn of the last century; Scribner’s and Leslie’s most notably. He also created full color bookplates for such titles as “Long Live the King” and an 1914 adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” by P.F. Collier & Sons.
Artist: Arthur Becher
An electric in composition rare surviving original pastel on illustration board by Earl MacPherson created in the 1940s for a Patriotic pin-up brochure with text on how to survive an enemy military air raid and subsequent blackout. We will be selling all of the pastels from this important commissioned homeland wartime “Blackout Brochure”. This was a cheeky, lighthearted morale boosting effort making great use of double entendre and the talents of MacPherson to fight fear during World War II.
Artist: Earl MacPherson
A large and radiant calendar girl pin-up pastel by Billy Devorss created for The Thomas D. Murphy Calendar Company of Red Oak Iowa. Devorss had a studio in New York City in the Beaux Arts Building and worked for many Calendar Companies of the day creating large format pastel illustrations of modernist fashionable attired heart-breakers in an inventive art deco manner.
Artist: Billy DeVorss
George Petty’s enormously successful career as an illustrator began in the mid-1920s painting magazine covers and images of beautiful girls for calendars. The creation that made him legendary debuted in the first issue of Esquire magazine in 1933. The “Petty Girl,” with her dreamy curves and witty banter, quickly became a popular symbol of the American male’s feminine ideal.Esquire produced two other calendars by Petty in 1955 and 1956. This painting appeared as the September Petty Girl in the 1956 Esquire calendar. Rendered in watercolor on board, nicely framed and ready to hang.
Artist: George Petty
Grapefruit Moon Gallery is ecstatic to offer the original pair of carved Hondurous Mahogany decorative column panels that were built for the tavern in Hollywood California’s legendary Masquers Club on 6735 Yucca Street. These Afro-American nymphs were carved by the noted WPA muralist and woodcarver Stuart Holmes. We purchased these with the two large original Henry Clive Masquers Club mural paintings we offered and sold earlier this year.
Artist: Stuart Holmes
