Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
Jon Whitcomb was perhaps the most accomplished “glossy” magazine illustrator working in the mid-century modern style. This fabulous glamour and Western Americana mash-up interior gouache illustration painting for the January, 1951 edition of Cosmopolitan magazine showcases the skillful eye, technical excellence and delightful imaginative sense of narration that set him atop of the field. Commissioned for a story by Shirley Shapiro Pugh titled […]
Artist: Jon Whitcomb
A sexy and mod late 1950s gouache illustration on board by Arnold Kohn that we believe to have been used as a pin-up calendar commission.
Artist: Arnold Kohn
This rugged barroom shootout scene is a dramatically rendered, Western Americana gouache illustration by the California illustrator Fred Ludekens.
Artist: Fred Ludekens
A pair of interior illustrations in pen & ink by Louis Rhead, from the 1924 edition of Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge. The drawings are on 2 separate sheets of watercolor paper which were mounted on one illustration board by Rhead. Works are nicely matted and framed in a period dark oak quarter sawn mission oak frame.
Artist: Louis Rhead
A bewitching and highly detailed pen and ink rendering by Louis Rhead used in the 1915 book publication of Lorna Doone. Caption Reads ” Lorna and John Ridd before Sir Ensor Doone…. Fools you are be fools forever, said Sir Ensor Doone, at last.” Beautifully matted and framed in an antique period fine wood gilt lined frame.
Artist: Louis Rhead
An electrifying, intense, and important original oil painting by Eric Pape for a 1928 Edition of Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” A dark and macabre masterwork from a climactic mob scene in this brooding despairing tale, the work is featured as a full page color-plate on page 488 in the chapter “An Awkward Friend”. An artist signed hard cover edition of the book is included with the sale and the work is nicely matted and framed in a period frame behind glass.
Artist: Eric Pape
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
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
A sophisticated, topical Orson Lowell pen & ink drawing featuring a Japanese soldier bowing before a mythically inspired goddess of death (named by Lowell Mortise, a play on the latin word for death) with the caption So Sorry – have made mistake. The age of this piece, which dates to the first years of the 20th century, makes this by all accounts a commentary on the massive casualties ensued during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905, a war Japan won, but at a human price much too high.
Artist: Orson Lowell
A fun and breezy interior magazine illustration for Argosy magazine – July, 1946 by Ray Johnson illustrating a story titled “My Son’s Old Man” by Fred Malina. A classic Americana image featuring a soda jerk performing his then coveted job at a snappy modernist Art Deco styled soda fountain much to the delight of two lovely […]
Artist: Ray Johnson
