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A poignant, large and decorative mural which reflects upon the devastation and loss caused by the Hartford, Connecticut floods of 1936. Workers from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) program provided flood relief, patrolling city streets, and rescuing Hartford residents in row boats. This large iconic artwork captures the Great Depression’s bleak urgency and despair in muted banal tones from within the temporary government shelter with newly widowed survivors and children reeling in the devastation.

After The Flood

Artist: Alton Tobey

A dazzling 1920s art deco illustration painting of a beautifully costumed, formally attired maiden at an evening summertime patio engagement. Work is stylistically mindful of Edward Eggleston and Gene Pressler who created countless similar fanciful colorful and ornamental images for calendar companies of the era. It is our belief that this too was a published calendar image. Work is beautifully matted and framed in a handsome gesso art deco period frame.

A Summer Time Fete

Artist: Eyre

A large ethereal and transcendent fantasy themed pastel by Frederick Stuart Church firmly planted in the then dominant Art Nouveau movement. Four angelic maidens emerge from graceful flowing lines conjured mid flight, the artwork highlights the artist’s soothing and decorative palette and imaginative sense of composition.

Four Celestial Angels

Artist: Frederick Stuart Church

A mixed media work by Alton S. Tobey in pencil and oils depicting a pair of African American Navy Midshipmen toiling at work. This work from the WPA era is handsomely framed in a period wide profile gesso frame behind glass.

The Climbers

Artist: Alton Tobey

A smartly rendered pin-up girl gag watercolor cartoon for Esquire Magazine by noted African American cartoon artist and illustrator E. Simms Campbell. Gag features a Bedouin trader desert scene with a harem girl, tagline reads “Personally, I think the camel is a much smarter buy”. Work is ink stamped by Esquire Magazine on the verso and signed by the artist lower right.

The Camel is a Smarter Buy

Artist: E. Simms Campbell

A dazzling and scarce surviving commercial pin-up illustration by Pearl Frush Brudon, a successful female illustrator who worked in gouache and watercolors with a unique and spectacular photo realism to her works. A lovely red headed seductress of the 1940s appears in soft focus in this luminous work, signed lower right with the artist’s married name.

Glamorous Beauty in Soft Focus

Artist: Pearl Frush

Featuring a Depression-era machinist at work creating a Pratt & Whitney aircraft engine, this 1940 artwork by WPA artist Alton Tobey combines the unusual muted palate and composition of the regionalist movement with the dystopian feel of the surrealists. This powerful oil on canvas was created for the East Hartford Pratt & Whitney plant, and presents a deeply moving picture of industrialism in the lead up to World War II.

WPA Machinist

Artist: Alton Tobey

A rare surviving cover painting by Harold H.W. McCauley for the September 1938 edition of Fantastic Adventures; Volume #1 issue #5. This is likely the earliest commissioned pulp cover illustration by the artist. A classic art deco depiction of the perils of the near future space age, as envisioned in the campy, naive era of the 1930s. The mild bondage, damsel in distress content provided an additional titillating shock at the newsstands which carried this early pulp/science fiction title.

Futurist Raygun Firefight

Artist: Harold McCauley

This exceptionally large oil on canvas mural by Henry Clive was created for the long gone legendary Hollywood Boulevard haunt “The Jade Lounge.” Titled “The Buddha-Pest,” the image acted as a logo for the bar, with matchbooks and post cards created with its likeness to attract tourists. The Jade Lounge became a destination and this monumental painting remained a focal point of the restaurant for decades. Henry Clive executed several murals for Hollywood nightclubs, and for The Masquers Club, Hollywood’s oldest theatrical club.

A Buddha-Pest

Artist: Henry Clive

An original gouache on board created for the May 1962 edition of Male Magazine, illustrating “The Daring GI Raider Who Saved Our New Guinea Stronghold”. A large, finely rendered scene depicting a gun battle, with requisite yet inexplicable scantily attired native babes, as per the norm of the bizarre and lowbrow world of “The Sweats.”

New Guinea GI Raider

Artist: Mort Künstler

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