Grapefruit Moon Gallery

Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration

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A sophisticated, topical Orson Lowell pen & ink drawing featuring a Japanese soldier bowing before a mythically inspired goddess of death (named by Lowell Mortise, a play on the latin word for death) with the caption So Sorry – have made mistake. The age of this piece, which dates to the first years of the 20th century, makes this by all accounts a commentary on the massive casualties ensued during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905, a war Japan won, but at a human price much too high.

The Spoils of War

Artist: Orson Lowell

Dating to approximately 1910, this large and expertly rendered gouache painting likely was used as magazine advertising art for Kodak Cameras in American weekly magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post. This bears a Forbes Litho Company of Boston ad agency verso label and bears the name of “Thompson” on the back of the illustration board, the artist is unidentified at this point. Titled “Vacation Requirement” this is great early 20th century advertising Americana treasure with a stylish Edwardian attired family cooling off at the beach.

Vacation Requirement

Artist: Unknown

A smartly conceived and modern jazz age oil-on-canvas painting of a ravishing Jeanette MacDonald, the cover for The New Movie Magazine, June 1932. Executed in a high glamour, severe art deco style by the American Illustrator McClelland Barclay. Work is a defining example by this talented and prolific artist and comes beautifully framed in an ornate gold gilt American Arts & Crafts fine museum quality carved frame. A lost treasure from the golden age of Hollywood glamour and elegance.

Jeanette MacDonald

Artist: McClelland Barclay

Teen-Age Gangs was created by Rafael Desoto as cover art for a 1954 Popular Library Paperback Book written by Dale Kramer and Madeline Karr. A gritty defining example which shows a bleak sensationalized, youth gone wild culture, which was to captured the moral panic over juvenile delinquency that was a focal point of American culture […]

Teen-Age Gangs

Artist: Rafael Desoto

An original pen and ink drawing from Nell Brinkley one of the premier female figures of the “Golden Age of American Illustration” that appeared originally in the William Randolph Hearst publication New York Journal-American newspaper during the 1920s or 1930s.

Three Stages of Life

Artist: Nell Brinkley

A large American impressionist oil painting by the well listed illustrator Edmund Davenport. A frequent cover artist for a number of Golden Age of Illustration glossy magazine titles, Davenport excelled at this manner of romancing the celebratory moments of life without resorting to obvious sentimentalism. This well realized and luminous work utilizes an impasto technique and a lush fall color palette and was used as the cover for the November 1928 Thanksgiving cover for The American Magazine.

Thanksgiving Day Harvest

Artist: Edmund Davenport

Pulp illustrator James Lunnon created this oil on canvas painting of Norma Shearer for the September 1935 issue of Movies Magazine. The hair and styling seem to date this to the mid 1930s-the height of Shearer’s renown as the Queen of MGM, a title bestowed upon her in 1927 when she married Irving Thalberg. Unusually […]

A Smiling Norma Shearer

Artist: James Lunnon

This original gouache painting by Harry Bennett was used as cover art for the Pyramid paperback publication of “Cry Shame” written by Gore Vidal under the pseudonym Katherine Everard. During his early career, Vidal published under several pseudonyms in order to evade the accusation that the rate of his publishing made it impossible for him to be a “serious” literary author. This is a singular opportunity to own an original piece of both illustration art and literary history, from the estate of Charles Martignette.

Cry Shame

Artist: Harry Bennett

 

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