Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
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
A spectacularly alluring, inquisitive and beautiful view of Myrna Loy, captured in her pre-code early career by the master of Hollywood photography George Hurrell. In a gentle sepia on a large format double weight semi-gloss paperstock, Hurrell captures the beauty of the young Myrna Loy, with her effortless art deco style, and emboldened flapper sensibility. This is blindstamped by Hurrell lower right, and inkstamped on verso. This is a hand printed gallery portrait never intended for distribution, and is a moving rare portrait.
Artist: George Hurrell
Doris Niles was a premiere ballerina and concert dancer, known primarily for her Spanish-inspired pieces, and one of the shining beauties of the New York stage. Her flamboyant continental costume and dramatically posed stance in this portrait by Nikolas Muray, capture the dancer’s unique and refined sensibility. Muray, one of the masters of the modern expressive style, chronicled the New York dance world in the art deco jazz age, and his expert eye is on display to fine effect in this seductive view.
Artist: Nickolas Muray
Before her tenure as the reigning queen of Hollywood society, and her long-standing position as mistress of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, Marion Davies was among the most beautiful of Florence Ziegfeld’s glorified American girls. Here, she is a delicate princess captured at the height of her beauty by Alfred Cheney Johnston, who had as much a part of creating the Follies reputation as Ziegfeld himself.
Artist: Alfred Cheney Johnston
An exquisitely posed, unusually delicate view of Myrna Loy, by Elmer Fryer, the Hollywood glamour photographer who had perhaps the best sense of modernist style and fashion. This unusual view features Loy in blonde wig in her role as Sophie the dancer in “Bride of the Regiment.” An early view of the star, who would come to be known for her sassy wit and hard nosed sexuality in the Nick & Nora Thin Man series.
Artist: Elmer Fryer
A spectacular view of Clara Bow in jazz age headscarf with streamlined modernist style, by George Hommel. Bow’s wizened eyes and cupid feature captured the nihilism and eroticism of the Lost generation, as well as the heart of the American moviegoing public, and vintage original stills of her remain highly collectible.
Artist: George Hommel
Carole Lombard, one of the finest actresses of the golden era of Hollywood film, is captured in all of her glamour in this promotional portrait for Paramount Pictures. In dramatic sequined gown, the platinum blonde beauty who captured the heart of America in the 1930s, and died tragically promoting the war effort in 1941, still captivates.
Artist: Unknown
A crisply rendered jazz-age take on Adam & Eve and temptation within The Garden of Eden; this was created for the important 1932 Random House hardcover edition of George Gershwin’s Song-Book. This gouache painting illustrated the 1926 Gershwin song “Do Do Do” from the musical “Oh Kay”. A recent New York City Christie’s auction for a leather bound signed and numbered first edition of the songbook signed by both Alajalov and Gershwin brought $4207.00 with buyers premiums illustrating the significance and historic beauty of this unique pairing of talents.
Artist: Constantin Alajalov
The quintessential jazz baby, Joan Crawford is captured coyly beckoning at the viewer in this large format, double weight gallery photograph by Ruth Harriet Louise. The most important female photographer in Hollywood during the golden age of film, Louise is remembered for her ability to make the spirit of the art deco jazz age come alive.
Artist: Ruth Harriet Louise
