Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
Grapefruit Moon Gallery is honored to be able to offer “Ye Chiseler – Yo Ho Ho And a Bottle of Rum”, a large, commanding, seductive and masterful mural created by Henry Clive, to our eyes the finest illustrator working in jazz age Hollywood. Along with its companion work “The Infidel” (also available through Grapefruit Moon Gallery), Clive created this masterwork for the tavern of The Masquers Club, a historic and fascinating Hollywood institution.
Artist: Henry Clive
Price: Sold
An epic and poignant large allegorical preparatory painting by Eugene Savage for the mural titled Armistice, which was created for and still resides in the front reception room at The Elks Veteran Memorial in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.
Artist: Eugene Savage
Price: $13,500.00
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
Price: Sold
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
Price: $5,500.00
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
Price: $3,500.00
The fourth of ten 1939 mural designs by Mahlon Blaine, which were intended to become murals for the studio or showroom of noted New York City interior designer Paul MacAlister. In “The Toast of Manhattan” a nude goddess with serpents for hair pours a martini for a tuxedo clad robot as the adjoining stone masonry watches on disapprovingly. Even the tenements have eyes in this surrealist and inspired visionary artwork. Marked on verso design #4, this comes beautifully matted and framed from the estate of Paul MacAlister.
Artist: Mahlon Blaine
Price: Sold
The third of ten gouache paintings created by Mahlon Blaine in 1939 under the pseudonym G. Christopher Hudson, offering a dark and pessimistically erotic take on the skyscraper landscape that was taking over Manhattan. In this scene a nude Medusa like creature ball dances with a robot in a high wire styled act on scaffolding high above the city. Blaine treated each individual painting in the series as its own completed stand alone artwork, with painstaking detail and inspired yet terrifying imagery.
Artist: Mahlon Blaine
Price: Sold
In the late 1930s, avant garde illustrator Mahlon Blaine, working under the pseudonym G.Christopher Hudson created a series of illustrations which were intended to become murals for the studio or showroom of noted New York City interior designer Paul MacAlister. In this work, the second of the series, a mechanical bird menaces the Medusa-inspired nude goddess who cowers atop a stone robot in a patriotic American apple pie infused red, white and blue color palette.
Artist: Mahlon Blaine
Price: $6,500.00
In this work, the first of the series, and the image that was to greet visitors as they entered the room, a nude showgirl dancer does a sad burlesque, her shadow duplicated in silhouette in a Coney Island funhouse style. Both evoking and critiquing the sordid and semi-underground world of Depression-era girlie shows, the artwork lures the viewer into the underbelly of the city that is explored in the nine images that follow.
Artist: Mahlon Blaine
Price: $4,000.00
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, and this painting, titled Spirit of Capri was 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 commissioned mural works for Hollywood landmarks like The Jade and The Masquers Club as well as LaRue’s.
Artist: Henry Clive
Price: Sold
