Grapefruit Moon Gallery

Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration

automobilia

This powerful example of golden age American illustration art playfully explores the tension between past and future presented in the early motor age. In this affecting unsigned image, the cliche of the Western Americana “Westward Ho” expansion scene is reinterpreted through the addition of an up-to-the-minute flapper girl in an adorable cloche hat. Beneath our heroine–who, along with her car, is checked out by a cowboy attired service attendant–text reads “Forms No Hard Carbon.”

Forms No Hard Carbon

Artist: Unknown
Price:  SOLD

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.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Artist: Unknown
Price:  S O L D

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.

Country Drive

Artist: William Medcalf
Price:  S O L D

A rare surviving cover painting for the long running Motor Magazine title which evolved alongside the car industry from the very early years of automobilia through the machine age of progress and invention. Robinson executed these light-hearted Americana views for this Hearst title from the 1920s through the 1950s, this work appeared as the cover for the September 1930 issue. Here, a hard working garage hand is shown using a different sort of elbow grease to pry loose a coin from a tightwad couple by explaining the workings of “Ellbo – A Super Automotive Polish”.

A Little Elbow Grease

Artist: Robert Robinson
Price:  S O L D

This original gouache noir illustration by well listed and prolific illustrator Mort Kunstler was used as the January 1968 edition of Male, illustrating Mario Cleri’s “Blonde Bandit in Black Lace.” An explosive sex kitten car chase that captures the prevailing nihilism associated with the 1960’s “sweat magazine” art and envelope-pushing adventure fiction, this is a tense and hyper-realistic pop-art time capsule.

Blonde Bandit in Black Lace

Artist: Mort Künstler
Price:  S O L D

A Norman Rockwell-esque picturesque scene featuring a couple out for “a Sunday Drive” in the early 20th century. They are taking in the sights and showing off their 1908 Buick, in this 1940s produced Robert Berran idealized rendering of a bygone-era of rural Americana.

A Sunday Drive

Artist: Robert Berran
Price:  S O L D

 

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