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
This original 1920s oil on board painting by Henry Soulen is a commissioned interior illustration for The Saturday Evening Post. The image shows two figures engaged in what appears to be a traditional “ghost money” ceremony, a Taoist tradition of burning joss paper as an offering to spirits of one’s ancestors. The colorful, boldly painted, […]
Artist: Henry Soulen
Price: Sold
A skillfully executed interior illustration for a serialized story by Pearl S. Buck titled China Gold which ran in Collier’s Magazine from February 7-April 18, 1942. Caption reads: ” Father Valerian came out from the chapel at once and led the wounded men to the hospital “. A large crisply-rendered oil on canvas mounted on board. Martha Sawyers artwork is in the Frank Gehry-designed Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis.
Artist: Martha Sawyers
Price: SOLD
An exceedingly scarce original mixed media work by L. Goddard used as a published calendar by The American Art Works Calendar Company, Coshocton Ohio in 1931 as Song of the Nile. “L. Goddard” was the pseudonym for a pair of enterprising artists L.G. Woolfenden, a successful Detroit area commercial photographer, and Rudolphe/ Rudolph Ingerle a Vienna born fine art landscape artist who lived and exhibited at museums and galleries in Chicago after the turn of the last century. Their collaborative efforts resulted in some of the finest and most spectacular images in the Calendar Art genre. The pair was known for fantasy-laden Depression-era escapist themes: Indian Maidens, Gypsies, Salomes, Art Deco Egyptian Beauties and Grecian Goddesses posed in vivid and evocotive Maxfield Parrish -esque dreamscapes.
Artist: L. Goddard
Price: SOLD
A darling and very Art Deco in aesthetic portrait of Mary Brian, the silent and early talkie era Hollywood film star. We do not have the specific usage of this oil on masonite painting but it was likely created as a cover for a late 1920s Hollywood Movie Magazine by the artist, who worked prolifically for a number of titles during the period. The china doll imagery was one which Clive favored, as it plays on the coquettish doll like charms of the flappers of the period. The painting is signed lower right and handsomely framed in a period wide profile antique frame behind glass.
Artist: Henry Clive
Price: Sold
Harold McCauley created this tense, action-packed, gritty, and dramatic illustration for an-as-of-yet unidentified pulp title, circa 1940s.
Artist: Harold McCauley
Price: $1,650.00
A haunting and epic large scale finely detailed and tonally impacting oil on canvas painting by Charles E. Chambers. An Orientalist Black Market alter scene that utilizes ochre and umber tones in a dark and menacing suspense filled manner. This was an interior illustration for “Sons” the second book in the Good Earth trilogy by Pulitzer Prize winning author Pearl S. Buck. This eerie and emotionally powerful image illustrates a pivotal scene in which the Wang family, having lost their fortune through opium promiscuity, is forced to sell their village estate and its contents, in a black market auction of sorts.
Artist: Charles Edward Chambers
Price: $9,850.00
Shortly after the Armistice of 1918 brought an end to World War I, an outbreak of violence within San Francisco’s Chinatown attracted national attention, and raised awareness of the off-and-on gangland violence known as the Tong wars. As San Francisco became known as home to the largest Chinese population anywhere outside of Asia, fascination about […]
Artist: Pedro Llanuza
Price: Sold
A remarkable large scale exhibited fine art painting by Frederic Victor Poole titled “Kwan Yen,” this was exhibited at the 1933-1934 Chicago World’s Fair.
Artist: Frederic Poole
Price: Sold
This original 1920s oil on board by Henry Soulen was likely an interior spot illustration which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. The colorful, boldly painted, Orientalist scene shows a rickshaw and two figures in heated conversation in front of gates of what appears to be San Francisco’s Chinatown. Housed in a simple, original-to-the-painting wood […]
Artist: Henry Soulen
Price: Sold
