Grapefruit Moon Gallery

Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration

belle epoque

In Willy Pogany’s dazzling oil on board artwork, an Art Nouveau maiden finds herself in the summer foliage conversing with a little bird. This whimsical scene was created for and used as the front cover of Metropolitan Magazine, July 1916. This artwork marks the best period in Pogany’s prolific and well remembered long and successful career. A stylized belle-epoque, tightly rendered work that features a vibrant color palette and intricate use of the free-flowing forms that came to define the Art Nouveau aesthetic.

The Queen of Summer

Artist: Willy Pogany
Price:  Sold

A fashionable demure art nouveau maiden with a parasol is leered at by an Edwardian gent in a wig with opera glasses in this gouache illustration which dates from 1910 – 1920. The work is unsigned and is mindful in style of the works which appeared in Vogue and Vanity Fair Magazines. This is beautifully framed in a carved wood gesso antique frame.

Admiring a Fashionable Woman

Artist: Unknown
Price:  Sold

A monumental and important original large pastel illustration on stretched canvas by James Ross Bryson, executed in 1914 for The Thos. D. Murphy Calendar Company of Red Oak Iowa under the title “Reverie in Green”. Bryson was an influential and supremely gifted and handsomely paid American Illustrator who earned a hefty $200.00 per commission for images of his risque for the day, modern enchantress themed Art Nouveau Maiden depictions. This work is housed in it’s original wide solid mahogany gold gilt lined antique frame and is properly lined behind glass.

Reverie in Green

Artist: J. Ross Bryson
Price:  Sold

A beautiful historically inspired maiden with a sword amidst Moorish castles and architecture. A dazzling charcoal rendering by the Polish emigrant W.T. Benda, a frequent cover artist for Life, Hearst’s and The Shrine Magazine. Benda is perhaps best remembered today for his elaborate theater masks which made him the toast of New York City during the roaring 20’s jazz age. He also favored images of exotic European and Asian ingenues with mysterious foreign features and dress.

A Benda Princess

Artist: Wladyslaw Benda
Price:  S O L D

This set of two pendant oil paintings is unusual within Wenzell’s oervre, both for its classical mythological subject and explicit eroticism. These two paintings were clearly conceived as a matched set; they present a “before” and “after” narrative. The first panel was published as a vignette in the March 26th, 1910 issue of Collier’s magazine but we don’t believe that the second work was created for publication. This pair was displayed in the Wenzell’s 1967 Maxwell Gallery (San Francisco) exhibition, “The Age of Elegance.” An illustrated program is included with sale.

Bacchus and Nude Nymph

Artist: Albert Wenzell
Price:  S O L D

A wonderful original work by the gifted and prolific Louis F. Rhead this is 4 images on one illustration board, all were used for the 1916 Harper & Brothers published edition of The Arabian Nights . The maiden was the frontispiece for the introduction section and the stylized letters where the artists created fonts for chapter first letters. This is framed in a period, antique art nouveau bat wing gesso antique frame and looks devine as such.

Introduction From Arabian Nights

Artist: Louis Rhead
Price:  Sold

Grapefruit Moon Gallery is proud to offer the second of several original John Louis Rhead Art Nouveau/Belle Epoque-era illustrations only recently acquired from a New York estate. This large Thanksgiving Harvest goddess colorful and stylized image is titled November in pencil by the artist on the lower margin. The work is matted and framed in a large period gesso frame. This is an astonishing and rare surviving document from this American poster master. Rhead’s work appeared alongside Alphonse Mucha, Jules Cheret and Toulouse Latrec pieces in Les Maîtres de l’Affiche (Masters of Posters) folios at the turn of the last century.

November

Artist: Louis Rhead
Price:  S O L D

Fresh from a New York estate, Grapefruitmoongallery is proud to offer the first of several original John Louis Rhead Art Nouveau/Belle Epoque-era illustrations. This large harvest goddess image was exhibited at The Twenty-First Annual Exhibition Architectural League of New York 1900. The work is matted and framed in a large period gesso frame. An astonishing and rare surviving document from this American poster master. Rhead’s work appeared alongside Alphonse Mucha, Jules Cheret and Toulouse Latrec pieces in “Les Maîtres de l’Affiche” (Masters of Posters) folios at the turn of the last century.

Autumn

Artist: Louis Rhead
Price:  S O L D

A whimsically rendered, belle-epoque pen and ink illustration, presumably created for an early issue of Life magazine, addressing the adventures of growing old. A young girl on the left attempts to gain the attention of father time (viewed literally handing out birthdays off of an old cart) while Edwardian attired women on the right flee the aging process. This appears to be an illustration for a writing by Helen Ring Robinson, the author who in 1908 adaped a version of Uncle Tom’s cabin for children. Her name is ghost written in light pencil upper left below one of the 8 draining hour glasses.

Adventures in Growing Old

Artist: Orson Lowell
Price:  SOLD !!

 

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