Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
A decorative and extreme Art Deco/Machine Age pen and ink advertising drawing by Cardwell Higgins for the 1927 Cadillac Convertible. Work is signed and dated lower right and beautifully framed and matted behind glass; from the estate of Charles Martignette. Higgins was an accomplished draftsman and had a keen eye for design and graphics as seen in this smartly rendered work.
Artist: Cardwell Higgins
The WPA artist and art deco designer Vladimir Yoffe interrogates the tension between war and peace, past and future in this abstractly inspired gouache artwork dating to the end of World War II.
Artist: Vladimir Yoffe
This electric and inventive progress-through-industry themed gouache painting by Mahlon Blaine is signed and dated 1955. The image dramatizes the industrial era with a shirtless industrial worker forging steel in a machine-age apocalyptic scene that draws its light and intensity and sense of movement from the fire’s sparking glow emitted from within an ominous furnace.
Artist: Mahlon Blaine
This pen and ink drawing with gouache highlights is an early work by renowned illustrator Cardwell Higgins and a sublime example of his art deco style.
Artist: Cardwell Higgins
For sale is an original painting by Erle Loran, titled Light Operator. Signed and dated in the lower right corner,with an Oakland, California exhibit label on verso.
Artist: Erle Loran
An inventive early offering by the noted industrial designer Paul Ritter MacAlister, who went on to be an interior designer especially noted for his mass-produced “Plan-a-Room” kit with scale furniture and room layouts that could be used to plan and organize home spaces for consumers. This is a very well executed work it is done in the style of Erte essentially and features an art deco nude goddess of the darkness cowering under the bright sunshine radiating from the corner of the canvas – superimposed with a pipe smoking skeleton in a trompe l’oeil “trick of the eye” manner.
Artist: Paul MacAlister
The tenth and final proposed mural painting by Mahlon Blaine for a New York City interior showroom for industrial designer Paul Ritter MacAlister, created in 1939 under the pseudonym G.Christopher Hudson. In this original gouache painting a nude uses a movie camera to capture assorted gadgets working together to become a Rube Goldberg machine, in a pointed commentary on the needless complexities of life in the machine age. Painting is handsomely framed and matted behind glass and is initialed lower left from the estate of Paul Ritter MacAlister.
Artist: Mahlon Blaine
The ninth of ten proposed mural paintings by Mahlon Blaine created for a never completed Paul Ritter MacAlister interior space in New York City. Under the pseudonym G. Christopher Hudson Blaine developed this sequence of dystopian views of the machine age. In this work a nude hand feeds dollar bills to an animate yet robotic cash register which serves as the greedy symbolic manifestation of industry. Again the artist employs a patriotic red & white and blue color palette to alarming effect.
Artist: Mahlon Blaine
This is the largest and most detailed and only signed painting from this series by Mahlon Blaine, number eight of ten the verso is titled “Nude on Gadget – Out of Control” and signed “G. Christopher Hudson” with a New York City address. In this image a nude sits atop the observation deck of the Chrysler Building high above New York City in a frozen in time Salvador Dali like winter surrealist cityscape. A frozen water faucet has created a block of ice that a nude goddess sits on oblivious to the cold as city workers attempt to break the ice and another hoists construction lumber from the skyscrapers iconic art deco modernist machine-age observation deck.
Artist: Mahlon Blaine
The seventh of ten mural concepts by Mahlon Blaine for a New York City public space designed by noted industrial designer Paul Ritter MacAlister. This work is stylistically a departure, a cubist abstract half man/half woman nude that guards or invites one into a passageway in a color palette and modernist style suggestive of Picasso.
Artist: Mahlon Blaine
