"Battle of the Gods, " Mural Preparatory Drawing by Dunbar Beck, Art Deco

This dramatic drawing of St. George and the dragon was executed in 1954 by Gaston Goor, who was famous for illustrating a number of books by Roger Peyrefitte and others in France. Go...

This virtuosic pen-and-ink drawing shows several gods cavorting with wild-maned horses in an Art Deco galaxy. All the figures are perfectly stylized as if parading across a classical...

Vivid and powerful, this large Art Deco mural study was painted by Elsa Jemne for the Northern States Power Building in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1930-31. The painting shows a nude mal...

Best known for his masterful painting of horses and polo players for a Hollywood clientele, this important study -- marked off in a grid to help the painter transfer the image to a large canvas -- was drawn by Kenneth Stevens MacIntire, a California painter. His depiction of male and female nudes on...

Wheeler Williams (American, 1897-1972) Untitled Study, 1942 Pencil on paper 9 1/4 x 12 1/4 in. Signed lower right recto: Wheeler Williams, 1942 Inscribed recto: Study for painting of the black stallion and wood nymphs, balcony on studio 15 @ 67th, NYC, 1942 A native of Chicago, Wheeler Williams is known for his allegorical, narrative work including "Tablets to Pioneers" on the Michigan Avenue bridge in Chicago, and "Settlers of the Seaboard" in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. He graduated with honors from Yale University in 1919 and earned a Master of Architecture degree from Harvard in 1922. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago with sculptor Albin Polasek...

GILBERT LEDWARD, RA, PRBS (1888-1960) Tennis, Golf, Shooting, Ice-Skating, Dreaming – Proposed Design for Decorative Frieze in the Italian Drawing Room at Eltham Palace, commissioned by Stephen Courtauld Signed and dated July 9th 1933 Watercolour and pencil 12.5 by 49.5 cm., 5 by 19 ½ in. (frame size 36 by 67 cm., 14 ¼ by 26 ¼ in.) Exhibited: The artist’s daughter; London, The Fine Art Society, A Centenary Tribute, Feb 1988, no. 43. Gilbert Ledward was born in London. He was educated at St Mark’s College, Chelsea. In 1905 he entered the Royal College of Art to study sculpture under Edouard Lanteri and in 1910 he entered the Royal Academy Schools. In 1913 he won the Prix de Rome for sculpture, the Royal Academy’s travelling award and gold medal, which allowed him to travel in Italy until the outbreak of the Wold War I. During the war he served as a lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery and was appointed as an official war artist in 1918. Following the war he was largely occupied as a sculptor of war memorials including the Guards Division memorial in St James’s Park and the Household Division’s memorial in Horse Guards Parade. In 1934, supported by Eric Gill and Edwin Lutyens, he established a company called Sculptured Memorials and Headstones, which promoted better design of memorials in English churchyards. His war memorials after World War II include one in Westminster Abbey to the Submarine Service, Commandos and Airborne Forces. Ledward was Professor of Sculpture at the Royal College of Art (1927-1929) and in 1937 was elected at Royal Academician. He became President of the Royal Society of British Sculptors and a trustee of the Royal Academy. The present work is a design for an intended decorative frieze for the Italian Drawing Room of Eltham Palace. In 1935 the remains of the medieval royal palace of Eltham was rescued from decay by Stephen and Virginia Courtald who built an ultra modern Art Deco house to adjoin the existing Great Hall. They employed the architects John Seeley and Paul Edward Paget and the fashionable Mayfair interior designer the Marchese Peter Malacrida to design the strikingly glamorous 1930s interiors of the new house. The dramatic entrance hall was created by the Swedish designer Rolf Engstromer...

A rather odd pencil sketch on paper, housed in a later glazed and ebonised frame. The sketch shows a medieval scene, with a warrior in the centre with divines either side. Age rela...

French Art Deco black and white framed drawing. Beautifully executed stylized French Art Deco black and white drawing in a giltwood frame wit...