Grapefruit Moon Gallery

Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration

muralist

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.

The Toast of Manhattan

Artist: Mahlon Blaine

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.

Nude Dancing with Robot

Artist: Mahlon Blaine

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.

Mechanical Bird and Nude

Artist: Mahlon Blaine

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.

The Sad Burlesque

Artist: Mahlon Blaine

A kinetic and surrealist hypnotic work showing an African Fertility Dance that likely was a proposed cover for The American Weekly magazine, for which the artist was active in the 1940s. Inscribed Property of Andre Durenceau lower right; a jarring work by one of our favorite avant-garde art deco era illustrators. Nicely matted and framed behind glass in a period frame.

The Fertility Dance

Artist: Andre Durenceau

An allegorical angelic scene by noted American fine artist, muralist, and illustrator Charles Allen Winter titled “Liberty Unchained.” Our research leads us to believe this was an interior magazine illustration for Cosmopolitan, which ran a series of spiritually relevant writings by Roycroft founder and early twentieth century philosopher Elbert Hubbard under the title “Little Sermons”–all illustrated by Winter. Several of Winter’s “Sermons” paintings were then reproduced in Hubbard’s own publication “The Fra.” From the estate of Charles Martignette, the sadly departed author of the “The Great American Pin-Up.”

Liberty Unchained

Artist: Charles Winter

Andre Durenceau, the French-American illustrator and muralist, mines his Jewish heritage in this symbolist 1950s imagining of the sanctuary of a synagogue. Evoking horror and hope, this severe surrealist image presents a vision of resurrection in the aftermath of World War II. The oil on canvas is technically refined, and filled with historically resonant Judaica imagery from biblical to modern times. This piece, titled Invitation, has both the scope of mural art and the narrative detail of magazine illustration.

Invitation

Artist: Andre Durenceau

A 1920s original oil on canvas painting by noted New York artist and muralist John Hemming Fry. Like his fellow muralists Eugene Savage and Edwin H. Blashfield, Fry created epic imagery in a dreamscape romanticized style, borrowing freely from classical Greek, Celtic and Roman folklore and imagery. This mythological trilogy on death and dying features three separate vignettes painted in subdued blue and steel gray tones against a background of ancient Northern European hills. A flowing, lyrical, sometimes abstracted composition that also incorporates elements of the contemporaneous Dada and Surrealist movements. An inventive and decorative large antique oil painting that retains its original handsome gesso frame, and is verso inkstamped by the artist.

A Celtic Tragedy

Artist: John Hemming Fry

A poignant, large and decorative mural which reflects upon the devastation and loss caused by the Hartford, Connecticut floods of 1936. Workers from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) program provided flood relief, patrolling city streets, and rescuing Hartford residents in row boats. This large iconic artwork captures the Great Depression’s bleak urgency and despair in muted banal tones from within the temporary government shelter with newly widowed survivors and children reeling in the devastation.

After The Flood

Artist: Alton Tobey

 

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