Grapefruit Moon Gallery

Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration

The Golden Gallery

Featured within The Golden Gallery are works by influential artists such as Rolf Armstrong, Gil Elvgren and Earl Moran. These important paintings represent the pinnacle of illustration art , we trust you will enjoy this curated selection of genre-defining examples and unsurpassed rarities from the Grand Age of American Illustration.

Grapefruit Moon Gallery is delighted to offer this recently unearthed George Jerome Rozen pulp painting featuring the Shadow in dramatic confrontation. Featured as the cover of the September 15, 1936 edition of Street and Smith’s long running series “The Shadow,” this is an important offering an exceedingly scarce surviving original pulp cover painting from the golden age of illustration. Recently uncovered from a Pennsylvania estate, as collectors will lament, original cover paintings from The Shadow prove near impossible to locate.

The Shadow In Jibaro Death

Artist: Jerome Rozen

A dazzling, large oil on canvas painting by frequent Saturday Evening Post cover artist Frederic Stanley. This wild prohibition-era, Charleston-dancing, Roaring Twenties flapper girl celebrates a Loew’s Theatre New York Policeman’s Ball Burlesque show. This is a wonderfully rendered artwork and a piece of New York history originally owned by Eve Green, the first wife of hotel magnate Harry Helmsley. Created for the cover of the program associated with this 1926 review, this important work showcases the 1920s jazz-age aesthetic of Manhattan’s bustling Vaudeville/Burlesque social scene.

The Policeman’s Ball, 1926

Artist: Frederic Stanley

This fresh and dazzling Gil Elvgren oil on canvas painting titled “Pot Luck” is a rare surviving commissioned work for the Brown & Bigelow Calendar Company, St Paul MN. This image graced calendars in 1961 and also served as the 6 of clubs in the “52 American Beauties” playing card series. The entire deck featured Elvgren pin-up beauties, a fact that demonstrates the incredible popularity of this iconic artist. With its sin city scenario, and Kim Novak/Marilyn Monroe inspired seductress at the one armed bandit, this is exciting, risque and unquestionably one of the most desirable Elvgren artworks to come to market. Recent auction records on the artist top out at $262,900 and on July 15th 2009, 3 Brown & Bigelow original calendar pin-ups closed at $215,100.00, $191,200.00 and $143,400.00 after spirited bidding. Elvgren is without a doubt the most important pin-up artist in American history and this is by all accounts a masterwork and an Elvgren painting for the ages.

Pot Luck!

Artist: Gil Elvgren

Grapefruit Moon Gallery is honored to offer this rare and exceptional original pastel illustration which Henry Clive created for the cover of the Valentines Day edition (February 13, 1937) of “The American Weekly.” Part of Clive’s “Vision of an Artist” series of covers for this Randolph Hearst publication, these Visions illustrated forces of nature such as the tornado and (in this case) Aurora Borealis as mythical images of femininity. The concept of women as natural phenomenon and even natural disasters is something Clive took a personal interest in, as his 6 failed marriages will attest. This enchanting and inventive depiction titled “The Aurora” features favorite Clive model and Randolph Hearst mistress Marion Davies as the goddess of the northern lights, radiating over a polar ice cap.

The Aurora

Artist: Henry Clive

Grapefruit Moon Gallery is pleased to offer a rare surviving Jerome Rozen pulp cover painting from an as of yet undetermined Street & Smith 1930s publication. This macabre and defining oil on canvas shows an old west tavern with a handsome, smoking-gun-holding cowboy menaced by a hooded villain in Day of the Dead Calaca mask. This masterful dark western themed artwork is tense with imminent danger. Signed lower right; painting has been relined and is ready to frame and enjoy.

The Day of the Dead

Artist: Jerome Rozen

A large and impressive oil on canvas by beloved American illustrator Haddon Sundblom titled “Moonlight and Roses.” An inspired and luminous, traditional southern Gone With the Wind inspired scene that was likely a commission for Maxwell House Coffee. Included in the assembled cast of characters is a self portrait of the artist himself. Framed in an ornate period gilt frame with a Louisville Kentucky verso framing label.

Moonlight and Roses

Artist: Haddon Sundblom

A delightful and never before offered on the market large and sensational Brown & Bigelow commissioned pastel illustration by Rolf Armstrong, featuring a sassy and sexy stylized southwestern attired cowgirl in traditional charro hat, riding pants and and tassled boots. From the zenith of Armstrong’s long tenure as “The Father of American Pin-up”. A 1944 large Brown & Bigelow Calendar of image titled “Hi, Neighbor” is included in sale. Among the finest Armstrong works we have ever owned.

Hi, Neighbor

Artist: Rolf Armstrong

A dazzling and otherworldly cover painting by Virgil Finlay for the August 1947 edition of “Famous Fantastic Mysteries” illustrating the interior story by Andrew Marvell titled “Minimum Man”,”A Novel of Terror Unseen”. A scarce commissioned science fiction themed pulp cover from this long running title for Popular Publications and a rare surviving luminous example and one of Finlay’s finest celebrated cerebral creations.

Minimum Man

Artist: Virgil Finlay

 

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