Grapefruit Moon Gallery

Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration

landscape

A lyrical American impressionist oil painting by Charles Allan Winter, one of our favorite 20th century fine artists and illustrators. This is a large and important work with two demure Art Nouveau maidens in a lush and colorful stylized fantasy landscape. Verso retains original exhibition card and title of “Music”. Housed in a wide profile hand carved Paul Carter Goodnow American Arts & Crafts frame, a defining example from the Charles Martignette collection.

Music

Artist: Charles Winter
Price:  $10,500.00

This technically dazzling painting by the French-American artist, muralist, and illustrator Andre Durenceau shows a colorful art deco landscape conceived in the manner of Rockwell Kent, with a lake in the foreground and an oversized flying fish adding the surreal touch for which the artist was known to the scene. This gouache on canvas is signed lower right and […]

Flying Fish

Artist: Andre Durenceau
Price:  Sold

“Racing the Sun” is a rare surviving oil on stretched canvas painting by Ruehl Frederick Heckman, created for the Thomas D. Murphy Calendar Company. During the 1930s Heckman executed a series of five paintings for this storied calendar company, all featuring bold aviation progress and industrial themes. These works ponder the collision of the industrial revolution’s streamlined machine age aesthetic with previous generations traditional and more pastoral ways.

Racing The Sun

Artist: Ruehl Frederick Heckman
Price:  S O L D

A large well preserved pencil signed copper plate etching by Stephen Parrish, the celebrated artist, etcher and father of beloved American Illustrator Maxfield Parrish. Featuring a New England harbor view with a lone fisherman standing on the pier. The presence of the figure is unusual for etchings by Parrish, whose harbor landscapes rarely featured images of people. This was framed in the 1920s and retains the original unopened backing paper and a verso label from “E & A Art Shop.” The etching is signed in pencil lower right in the margin and is in an fine state of preservation. A rich impression on Japan paper in excellent condition.

A Harbor Scene With Figure

Artist: Stephen Parrish
Price:  S O L D

The second work from a pair of 1920s gouache paintings by the Minneapolis Minnesota artist Lee Mero, titled “Land O’ the Sky Blue Water.” This retains its brightly colored pin striped art deco enamel painted wood frame. This was likely a commissioned work for the Buzza Motto Company who prospered during the Roaring 20s Jazz Age years providing prints, plaques, bridge tallies and menu books that captured the style and aesthetics of the burgeoning modernist art deco movement. This beautiful depiction of northern Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes glory captures the fascination with Native American culture with an Indian Chief in a birch-bark canoe and blue heron birds that are indigenous to the area.

Land O’ the Sky Blue Water

Artist: Lee Mero
Price:  S O L D

An unusual mid-century modern impressionist oil on canvas dated 1954 by well listed Minnesota painter and WPA muralist Dewey Albinson. A colorful view of a colorful space in the town Cocula, Jalisco, Mexico (where the artist lived for a time) titled The Yellow House. Painted in a dramatic and well realized impasto technique with wildly executed colors and a strong sense of composition and harmony. In original painted wide profile WPA aesthetic rough wood frame with exhibition tag on verso pine stretchers.

The Yellow House

Artist: Dewey Albinson
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 extraordinary and experimental early work by Hannes Bok, featuring a bizarre surreal landscape with a young boy riding a prehistoric creature. Hannes Bok was the pseudonym of Wayne Woodard, a self taught artist who was fascinated by the luminous quality of Maxfield Parrish’s oil paintings.

Upon a visit from the impoverished teenage Bok, and impressed by the examples of Bok’s work, Parrish gave Bok an expensive set of oil paints and brushes to help the teenager build on his obvious gifts.

Boy on Animal in Surreal Landscape

Artist: Hannes Bok
Price:  S O L D

Grapefruitmoongallery is proud to offer one of 3 original commissioned large circular oil paintings that adorned the restaurant walls of Larue’s a legendary Hollywood, Sunset Blvd. haunt that was owned by gangster character actor Jack LaRue. Henry Clive was a frequent patron and close friend of LaRue, these paintings were purchased directly from the restaurant about 45 years ago by the artist’s son Henry Clive O’Hara. In addition to being a prolific cover illustrator for Randolph Hearst’s American Weekly, Clive painted several large risque and attention garnering commisioned mural works for Hollywood landmarks like The Jade and The Masquers Club as well as LaRue’s.

Titled The Girl of the Golden West, the painting is named after and based on a Canco tin illustration Clive created in the 1920s. The work is framed in original round art deco silver & bronze washed wood frame and dedicated To my pal Jack; Henry Clive 1956.

Girl of the Golden West

Artist: Henry Clive
Price:  S O L D

 

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