Grapefruit Moon Gallery

Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration

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A large and monumental allegorical oil on canvas by Charles Allan Winter featuring a dying Roman warrior being attended to by a firey haired maiden. Work is signed by the artist “Chas. Winter 1896 Paris” lower right, an early offering from this highly regarded vanguard artist. This was presumably created while Winter was studying at the Julianne Academie of Paris, this has a wonderful Pre-Raphaelite dramatic and impacting style. The grand scale of the painting adds to its evocative epic charm.

A Roman Tragedy

Artist: Charles Winter
Price:  $10,500.00

Grapefruit Moon Gallery is honored to offer “They Shall Obtain Mercy,” a large and important gouache which served as preparation for one of 11 allegorical murals Savage created for The Elks Veteran Memorial in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. The works are still on display at this landmark destination. This deeply moving and symbolic work reflects on the hardships and loss of World War I. This poignant, decorative, important artwork is beautifully matted and framed, and the art has a room-commanding presence.

They Shall Obtain Mercy

Artist: Eugene Savage
Price:  Sold

A 1920s original oil on canvas painting by noted New York artist and muralist John Hemming Fry. Like his fellow muralists Eugene Savage and Edwin H. Blashfield, Fry created epic imagery in a dreamscape romanticized style, borrowing freely from classical Greek, Celtic and Roman folklore and imagery. This mythological trilogy on death and dying features three separate vignettes painted in subdued blue and steel gray tones against a background of ancient Northern European hills. A flowing, lyrical, sometimes abstracted composition that also incorporates elements of the contemporaneous Dada and Surrealist movements. An inventive and decorative large antique oil painting that retains its original handsome gesso frame, and is verso inkstamped by the artist.

A Celtic Tragedy

Artist: John Hemming Fry
Price:  SOLD

An important original oil painting by the German artist Paul Thumann titled “Psyche”. This groundbreaking erotic and risque winged fairy image was the artist’s most revered work. Thumann brought this painting to The United States in 1893 and sold the reproduction rights to “White Rock Table Water” for use in print ads and tin lithographic tip trays (a period example is included with sale). This was acquired by the prestigious Vose Gallery in Boston in 1913 and was framed at that time by them in a hand carved, signed and numbered Carrig-Rohane wide profile Arts & Crafts frame that like the painting is of museum quality.

Psyche

Artist: Paul Thumann
Price:  S O L D

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.

Myrna Loy in Bride of the Regiment

Artist: Elmer Fryer
Price:  S O L D

A Grecian inspired, fantasy themed, mixed media illustration that was used by the Thos. D. Murphy Calendar company for a 1930 calendar titled The Glory That Was Ancient Greece. This whimsical yet erotic Grecian maiden themed work consists of a heavily tinted photograph of the two Grecian adorned beauties by L.G. Woolenden and an elaborate garden landscape painting by Rudolph Ingerle that envelopes the photographic element. This team of enterprising calendar art talents created numerous works under the pseudonym L. Goddard Surviving original L Goddard artworks are quite rare and spectacular, and among our favorite examples of fantastical and escapist art deco/Great Depression calendar illustration. A large printed calendar from the Thomas D. Murphy calendar company archives is included in the sale.

The Glory That Was Ancient Greece

Artist: L. Goddard
Price:  S O L D

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
Price:  Sold

An inventive mixed medium early work by Edwin Georgi used as the cover for an early 1930s issue of “The Woman’s Home Companion.” A linear and modernist rendering of women’s disembodied heads that contrasts the art deco era ideal of make-up enhanced feminine beauty with classic Greek porcelain statuary. A clever and stylized early work by one of our favorite American Illustrators, Edwin Georgi.

A Pair of Art Deco Heads

Artist: Edwin Georgi
Price:  Sold

From the estate of noted wildlife artist Paul Bramson comes this unique pair of W.T. Benda mask motif plaster bookends. These were most likely a gift: they are impressed and signed by the artist as seen, and the paint effect was applied by Benda himself to create an antiquated, relic type of “found remains” appearance. Benda was a famed illustrator and exceptional mask maker and published a book in 1944 on his technique and glorious fine, often times whimsical masks.

Benda Mask Decorative Bookends

Artist: Wladyslaw Benda
Price:  S O L D

 

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