1930s VTG GEE BEE Z RACE PLANE ORIG PAINTING GRANVILLE BROS. JIMMY DOOLITTLE

Description

Fantastic art deco original painting that vividly brings back to life the thrilling era of airplane racing in the 1930s. Painting has the number and markings of the Granville Brothers' Gee Bee Z, which won the Thompson Trophy in Cleveland in 1931, piloted by Lowell Bayles. Bayles was killed later in 1931 trying to break the air speed record when the plane broke up and crashed in Detroit.
The Granville Brothers built several Gee Bee planes between 1929 and 1935. They were known for their look, their radical design, overpowered, short and stocky...and VERY  fast. Aviation pioneer Jimmy Doolittle flew one to glory in 1932; Doolittle was later the famed leader of the B-25 carrier-launched attack on Tokyo in 1942 which electrified the nation, gave the country a needed morale boost, and earned Doolittle the Medal of Honor. Unfortunately the Gee Bee planes were notoriously hard to fly, and several pilots lost their lives in them. So the planes were immortalized as fast and fatal.
The other planes in this painting may also represent planes Doolittle flew. The upper left may be a Type R "Mystery Ship"
-- a wire-braced, low-wing racing airplane built by the Travel Air
company in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The plane lower right may be the Laird "Solution," so called because it was designed to be a solution to problems inherent in the Mystery Ship.
This painting is very well done, great images of the planes, vivid period colors and heavy brush strokes give this a lot of depth. The art deco clouds are similar in style to the 1930s mural paintings of Thomas Hart Benton and others. The painting is on a 14 x 10 inch board; the frame shows some discoloration in the corners, is 17 x 13 and looks to be oak.
No way to precisely date this. The board is marked Permanent Pigments, Cincinnati. There was a very active and famous art school / colony in Cincinnati. Permanent Pigments was in business by 1933, and appears to have lasted perhaps into the 1970s. there was huge Midwestern interest in airplane flying, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland. I picked this painting up out of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
One curiosity on this painting is the color of the main plane, red and white, which matches previous Gee Bee models, and later Gee Bee models, including the Jimmy Doolittle plane, R-1. The City of Springfield however was black and yellow. Perhaps just artistic license, combing the Bayles and Doolittle planes. Also possible given the common black and white photography of the age, that the artist was bringing to life in color something he had not seen in person.
A vivid depiction of a bygone era.