Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
An outstanding, highly stylized, Art Deco, large format oil on canvas painting by the American fine artist and illustrator Henry Soulen. This was likely featured as an interior illustration for an American weekly magazine such as The Saturday Evening Post. Known for these types of depictions, Soulen was an early student of Howard Pyle; […]
Artist: Henry Soulen
Earle K. Bergey’s spicy pulp covers are known for their provocative, even lawless sensuality. It’s the root of their wild, jazz age, hedonistic charm. Even eighty years later, Bergey’s art looks daring, modern, and cool. Since more than 90% of original pulp cover artwork is thought to be lost, we were over the moon to come across two fresh-to-the-market original […]
Created for the October, 1935 issue of the spicy pulp title La Paree, this is a rare surviving original cover painting by Earle K. Bergey. In this whimsical jazz-age art deco scene, a blonde flapper girl is attempting to choose who will get to play the part of her dream man. Vying for the title are a […]
Artist: Earle K. Bergey
With cool blue undertones and moody, dramatic shadowing, this published oil on canvas interior illustration is a departure for artist Benton Henderson Clark who primarily created warm & vibrant narrative frontier and western scenes. Accompanying an interior story for Cosmopolitan magazine titled “The King’s Son”, a handsome and sharply dressed prince smokes a cigarette during […]
Artist: Benton Henderson Clark
Grapefruit Moon Gallery just unearthed a small collection of original Campbell’s Soup Kids illustrations. These appeared as print ads in countless American mainstream publications such as The Saturday Evening Post in the 1930s. In this offering a Dolly Dingle-type character Campbell’s Soup Kid doubles as a railroad flagbearer with lantern ablaze attesting to the importance of the railroad in 20th century American history. Verso is stamped with a usage print date of 10/11/33. Painting is nicely matted and framed behind glass and ready to hang.
Artist: School of Grace Drayton
Here at Grapefruit Moon Gallery, we are always tickled when illustration art shows up on PBS’s Antiques Roadshow, the 12-time Emmy nominated standard-bearer that paved the way for Pawn Stars, Storage Locker Wars, and a host of others shows that have gotten Americans searching their attics for dusty treasures. As loyal viewers, we were among the nearly eight […]
A costumed flapper girl, dressed to the nines in jazz-age fineries at a masquerade ball, is seductively caught in the light of a romantic full moon in this oil on canvas by J. Walter Wilkinson. The artist was a prominent and revered American illustrator, and we presume this to be a magazine cover for an […]
Artist: J. Walter Wilkinson
Nothing says “I’ve arrived” about a genre of art than its appearance on the walls of museums and galleries, and though it could be argued that illustration art is fashionably late to the party, its arrival is making a splash. Since the founding of Grapefruit Moon Gallery in 2003, we’ve seen a handful of touring exhibits […]
Grapefruit Moon Gallery had the honor and privilege of participating this past weekend in the 15th annual Twin Cities 20th Century Design Show and sale; featuring an eye popping building filled with antique Mission Arts & Crafts furniture, decorative collectibles and art pottery as well as Art Deco and Mid-Century Modern pieces. This was the first year the show […]
As purveyors of collectible illustrative works, we are often asked time and time again, “what is a lithograph?” It’s a printing process that you’ve probably encountered more times than you’re aware of. You see it heralded in museums as 18th and 19th century pieces of fine art. It was the covers of the magazines in […]
