Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
This voluptuous dreamy risqué redhead was created as calendar pin up art for the Goes Litho Company by the prolific and talented female Chicago area illustrator Pearl Frush. A red headed femme-fatale, loosely styled after Jean Harlow from her starring turn in the 1932 film Red Headed Woman, appears in a floppy wide brimmed straw hat with […]
Artist: Pearl Frush
This refined pastel portrait of film legend Mary Astor by the American illustrator Rolf Armstrong dates to 1933, during the artist’s brief tenure as a Hollywood portraitist. The elegant and understated large format artwork reflects Armstrong’s desire to move away from the rigid demands and deadline driven style of his in demand career as America’s leading calendar artist. In 1931, Armstrong moved from New York to the West coast and started an independent fine art company “Armstrong Art Services.”
Artist: Rolf Armstrong
The moment when Rita Hayworth pops onscreen for the first time in Gilda ranks among the most iconic film introductions of the 20th century. Her gravity defying hair flip and blinding smile seemed to epitomize mischievous flirtation, and through the extensive publicity campaign surrounding the film and a series of now legendary glamour photos by Robert […]
A deftly rendered luminous pastel portrait of silent and early talkie legendary Hollywood film star Greta Garbo, created as the cover for the November 1935 issue of Screenland magazine. The artist captures the glamorous side of Garbo as styled from a publicity shoot promoting her starring turn in the M-G-M adaptation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. […]
Artist: Charles Sheldon
Randolph Hearst commissioned this fine original oil on illustration board from Henry Clive for the cover of the American Weekly Magazine as part of Clive’s Pin Up Girls of History series, which reinvisioned contemporary starlet beauties as notorious vixens from throughout the past. In this example, the lovely 20th Century Fox film star Gene Tierney C. […]
Artist: Henry Clive
A dazzling Hollywood glamour pastel portrait of the always radiant Carole Lombard by Zoe Mozert used as the cover for the April 1936 edition of Screen Book Magazine. This published cover illustration is signed lower right and matted behind glass in its original limed wood and black enamel painted art deco moderne frame. Really a […]
Artist: Zoe Mozert
A large c. 1936 signed pastel portrait by Zoe Mozert of the Hollywood film star Loretta Young from about the time of her starring turn in Ramona. Zoe Mozert was a much in demand Hollywood film magazine cover artist during the pre-code years of Hollywood tinsel town glamour. She later settled into a long and […]
Artist: Zoe Mozert
A delicately rendered pastel on illustration board by Henry Clive, capturing an exotic pretty nude pin-up model with ruby red lips envisioned as a sleeping beauty. This captures effortlessly the prolific artist’s unique take on feminine allure. We believe this to be an unpublished illustration, retains its handsome hand carved wood gallery frame and is handsomely cloth matted and lined behind glass.
Artist: Henry Clive
Pre-code Hollywood starlet Verna Hillie is the subject of this erotically charged pastel portrait which was likely used as a cover for the title Reel Movie Fun, a short lived wild and racy publication. Pastel is dated and signed on the back and the sitter is identified in the artist’s hand as seen.
Artist: Cardwell Higgins
This early 1930s pastel by frequent Golden Age of Hollywood female cover artist Mila Baine, shows a radiant and stylish Norma Shearer looking smart, crisp and alluring. Likely a cover for the title Movie Mirror, for whom Blaine worked often during the period. Handsomely matted and framed behind glass in a fine period frame. Handsomely matted and framed behind glass in a fine period frame.
Artist: Mila Baine
