Illustration House

07/15/2018

Illustration House

We've finally re-launched our website: www.illustrationhouse.com

Illustration House

07/17/2017

It's time for San Diego Comic-Con again! We will have major works by Dean Cornwell, Malcolm Liepke, J. C. Coll, and many others, in booth 4302. See you soon!

08/19/2016

CEO: Norman Rockwell Museum: Stop Promoting & Selling a Fraudulent Biography of Norman Rockwell

This is not about taking sides in a battle over Norman Rockwell's artistic legitimacy. I'm signing this petition because I'm taking a stand against the irresponsible scholarship and shoddy biography that we see in Solomon's book. I've written about this at length in an article in the second issue of the Journal of Illustration, in 2014. For the Norman Rockwell Museum to support the book as free speech is one thing, but to promote the book as if it contained revelatory facts is quite another. The Museum must come clean about why they've promoted the book.

Were Norman Rockwell alive this book would be libelous, Deborah Solomon would be sued, and his Museum would not endorse or sell the book under any circumstances. Norman Rockwell is my grandfather; the family spent every magical Thanksgiving and Christmas with him in my childhood. But to people aroun...

07/17/2016

Roger and Zaddick will be at the San Diego Comic Con next week, booth 4302, or thereabouts. Among many wonderful drawings and paintings, we will be bringing work by terrific "new" talent, Kev Ferrara, from his recent Dead Rider book.

02/27/2016

Illustration House is moving again! It's just down a flight in the same building, but we're undergoing the great disruption right now, and probably until mid-March. I apologize to all the people who have tried to reach us recently and received no response. I will post updates here. — Roger Reed

07/07/2015

Illustration House will be at the San Diego Comic Con with over 100 drawings from the glory days. Inquire at the All-Star booth #4302

04/16/2015

Society of Illustrators:

The memorial for my father, Walt Reed, will be held at the Society of Illustrators (New York) on April 20, at 6:00 pm. You are hereby invited to attend and may rsvp via this page of theirs:
http://www.societyillustrators.org/Events-and-Programs/Special-Events/2015/Memorial/Remembering-Walt-Reed.aspx

03/22/2015

On the Passing of Walt Reed

An assessment of Walt Reed's impact, from Doug Dowd: http://www.dbdowd.com/graphic-tales-blog/2015/3/20/on-the-passing-of-walt-reed

It has been reported that Walt Reed died Wednesday (March 18, 2015) at the age of 97. I got the news from Roger Reed on Walt's page, and word has caromed around the illustration research community since. I am sorely disappointed that my old friend and colleague Jeff Pike is in Italy, becau…

03/19/2015

Our founder, Walt A. Reed, passed away today. We will post the date and time of a memorial service.

03/14/2015

We just had an unexpected visit from a dozen students from the Maastricht Art School, in the Netherlands. We've had groups from Savannah and Vancouver before, but this is, I think, the most far-flung yet.

02/28/2015

A detail from J. C. Coll's homage to E. A. Abbey

02/28/2015

We're having the first one-man show of Frank Thorne's work opening on March 7 from 4:00-7:00. Come and wear your barbarian gear, or whatever you've got! Yes, Red Sonya will be here too.

11/27/2014

“There IS a Santa Claus!” is the caption for this streamlined Christmas cover for Life magazine by Coles Phillips. This flapper is happy to get nothing for Christmas but an orange in her silk stocking and a check for $100, which was worth something in 1926.

11/19/2014

We have postponed the date of our sale to December 6 !!

11/12/2014

A major George Petty in the auction. The artist used this as his logo, when he appeared on TV show "What's My Line?" in November 1955.

11/11/2014

Joseph Clement Coll 1881-1921
Poster illustration, announcing the first appearance in print of:
“Sir Nigel” by Arthur Conan Doyle,
in the [Associated] Sunday Magazine, 1905;
Gouache, 14.5 x 21" not signed; estimate $9,000 - 12,000.

11/10/2014

In auction, November 22: John Gannam, Cosmo, January 1946; gouache, 18 x 13" signed and dated lower left. $6,000 - 8,000.
The ultimate Gannam, or the penultimate?

11/10/2014

In the auction: Russell Sambrook, oil on canvas, 30 x 25" signed. $5,000 - 7,000.

11/10/2014

The first image is an Alice Barber Stephens in our upcoming auction on November 22. The second image is also by Alice Barber Stephens and is in an upcoming auction at Sotheby's, two days earlier. Same medium (charcoal), roughly same size (20 x 13"), same year (1905), for the same book ("Under the Lilacs") by Louisa May Alcott! Ours is estimated $4,000 - 6,000. Theirs is $10,000 - 15,000. In fairness, theirs is a bit prettier. In fairness, ours has the girl archer.

11/09/2014

The answer to the question you are about to ask is no, this was not published, as far as we can tell. The artist is Mat Kauten. 1920s.
Oil on canvas, 26 x 19" signed lower right, estimated $2,500-3,500.

11/09/2014

Another Balzac illustration, this time by Pierre-Georges Jeanniot (1848-1934) for the "Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau" in the Little, Brown edition of the Comedie Humaine in 1899. But this one was probably not published. Oil on wood panel, 13.75 x 10.5", signed, $4,000 - 6,000.

11/09/2014

We will inform you when the website is up for the November 22 auction. Meanwhile, I'll post some more images from it here.
Jon Whitcomb could be stunning when he kept it simple:

11/08/2014

The great colorist Henry Soulen slumming for the pulps: this painting is for a John Carter of Mars story by Edgar Rice Burroughs that appeared on the cover of Blue Book magazine, January 1935.
Oil on board, 25 x 21.5" signed with pseudonym. $10-15K.
Most interesting is the hyper-musculature — this appeared before Superman.

11/08/2014

In our November 22 auction: One of several exquisite renderings by French artist J. Wagrez for 1899 edition of Balzac's complete stories.

11/08/2014

In our auction: a William Cotton New Yorker cover pastel. May 1, 1943. A perfect capsule of the eternal friction between liberty and authority.

03/13/2014

The Magazine Antiques has a column on the New Collector in their current issue which focuses on illustration art. I've attached a teaser, just to entice you to pick up the issue...

03/09/2014

People take John McDermott's work at its over-the-top face value, but he had a darkly satirical view of the illustration profession, and this came out in the movie "Loving" (1969) about a fictitious illustrator Brooks Wilson, which McDermott wrote the script for. The story has Wilson trying to claw his way up the advertising ladder, while having affairs, faking westerns, and sucking up to clients. This painting appeared in the movie, and all of the other artwork was supplied by McDermott too. There is a nice blog post on the movie with great stills on Today's Inspiration: http://todaysinspiration.blogspot.ca/2011/11/brooks-wilson-strikes-back.html

02/24/2014

A magnificent N. C. Wyeth in our March 15 auction. It has everything: his billowing, palpable clouds, the searing ultramarine landscape of the Adirondacks, the Transcendentalist communing with nature. This was done for a story in The Ladies' Home Journal, but we think it was very much a personal vision.

02/24/2014

A lovely tiger head by Charles Livingston Bull, with an estimate of only $900 - 1200.

02/24/2014

Detail from the ultimate Edwin Georgi illustration of a jewel thief. This will be in our March 15 auction. The lots are not posted on line yet; this is a preview.

02/24/2014

Our next AUCTION has been rescheduled for March 15, 2014! We will start posting images here shortly.

06/15/2013

Our auction is today, Saturday, June 15, at 1:00

06/14/2013

For just a couple years just prior to inventing the Kewpie doll, Rose O'Neill drew some of the most sublime instances of Art Nouveau graphics we've seen. This drawing was published in 1909, and will be in our auction.

06/14/2013

This Norman Rockwell image -- "War News" -- almost became a Saturday Evening Post cover, but in the end it was decided that it just wasn't clear enough what the figures are doing. [They're listening to the radio (lit up in yellow) for news of the Allied invasion of Normandy beaches.]

06/14/2013

Just to show that Norman Rockwell was not immune to numbskull art directors: "let's take out the horse, so no one will know who this guy is, then chop off his ear, shrink the signature, and write some phrenologic nonsense about how the shape of the head determines character (or is it vice-versa), and print it dark so the bags under his eyes become prominent." They should have let the great drawing speak for itself. Advert for Whiskey, ca. 1948.