glamour

In her most erotically charged, fur clad pose, Marie Prevost is the epitome of the jazz age flapper in this rare early 1920s view. One of Edwin Bower Hesser’s classic portraits, this showgirl inspired Hollywood glamour portrait captures a soft-focus and decadent view of the scandal-ridden star, who is now as much remembered for her tragic death as her glorious career. This large-format, double weight, matte finish photograph is an unusual and important look at the cult icon in her prime.

Marie Prevost in Erotic Flapper View

Artist: Edwin Bower Hesser

A rare surviving luminous pastel portrait of early talkie era legendary Hollywood film star Katherine Hepburn, created as the cover for the September 1933 issue of Screenland Magazine. An excellent example of cover portraiture by Charles Gates Sheldon who had a very prolific career creating stylized glamorous art deco Hollywood film star portraits for many of the leading jazz age movie magazine titles. Pastel is beautifully framed and silk matted behind glass.

Katharine Hepburn

Artist: Charles Sheldon

A rare original pastel of Jean Harlow commissioned and used as the cover for the March 1932 edition of “The New Movie Magazine” by prolific American illustrator Charles Gates Sheldon. Sheldon was a frequent cover artist for this title and for Photoplay Magazine capturing the allure of the silent and early talkie era female film stars in glamorous stylized pastel portraits taken from photographs he shot himself at his Carnegie Hall, New York City Studio. A coveted example of early tinseltown featuring perhaps the eras brightest and biggest star.

Jean Harlow New Movie Cover

Artist: Charles Sheldon

A deftly rendered luminous pastel portrait of silent and early talkie legendary Hollywood film star Greta Garbo, created as the cover for the June 1934 issue of Screenland Magazine. One of the finest examples of cover portraiture we have ever come across by Charles Gates Sheldon who had a very prolific career creating stylized glamorous art deco Hollywood film star portraits for many of the leading jazz age movie magazine titles.

Greta Garbo

Artist: Charles Sheldon

A recently discovered radiant C.1934 pastel portrait by Rolf Armstrong of the beautiful and glamorous and tragically short lived Hollywood film legend Carole Lombard. This work was never published, it was likely proposed as a cover for Modern Screen magazine. A luminous and large pastel on illustration board, handsomely matted and framed behind glass, a fresh never before on the market rare and important offering.

Carole Lombard in Mink Stole

Artist: Rolf Armstrong

From the estate of legendary jazz-age Ziegfeld Follies photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston comes this sensational pastel by noted American illustrator Penrhyn Stanlaws. Inscribed “To Cheney from Penrhyn Stanlaws”, this is a fabulous offering it features a stylish 1920s flapper girl in a cloche hat admiring her abundant beauty in a compact mirror. This was created as the cover for the October 4, 1924 issue of Collier’s magazine, and later inscribed and gifted to Johnston.

A Stylish Fadeaway Girl

Artist: Penrhyn Stanlaws

In an unusual blonde hatted view by George Hurrell, Joan Crawford is captured in her most captivating glory 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 Joan Crawford, with her effortless art deco style, and emboldened flapper sensibility. This is blindstamped by Hurrell lower right, and inkstamped on verso.

Pre-Code Joan Crawford

Artist: George Hurrell

In a glamorous wide-brimmed hat, Joan Crawford displays the smoldering intense gaze that was to become her trademark in this image by the incomparable George Hurrell. This double weight gallery still is the personality portrait at its finest, on a high end double weight photostock, and never intended for public distribution. A pre-code form of glamorous sophistication the likes of with Hollywood rarely saw.

A Hatted Joan Crawford

Artist: George Hurrell

In 1917, Theda Bara was the biggest draw for Fox studios, and a movie star whose popularity was surpassed only by Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. In this photograph by Albert Witzel, hand colored and printed she is seen posed in an early iteration of her Cleopatra headdress, with flowing deep black hair. Inscribed to Tom Mix, the cowboy superstar, who in 1917 had just joined Bara as a headlining performer for Fox studios, this came from Mix’s collection.

Theda Bara as Cleopatra

Artist: Albert Witzel

An elementally beautiful nymph in the midst of metamorphosis rises from the churning sea in this mythic and beautiful 1907 oil on canvas by Paul Swan. This important early example from the artist, who was himself a social butterfly, features tremendous sophistication of technique, and combines the Art Nouveau style which was popular at the time with hints of the streamlined figural forms which would become synonymous with the art deco era.

Metamorphosis of Beauty

Artist: Paul Swan

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