Time and Again

It's a fact of life that illustrators busy with looming deadlines sometimes resort to "borrowing" from the work of their peers, be it general inspiration, a certain detail, a pose or the whole piece.  Bolles himself was routinely swiped by other artists of his time and still is today, but I have yet to find a solid example where he swiped from another artist.  Granted, he often worked from photos and in some cases changed nary a thing, but he must have had some personal code about lifting ideas from artists, or at least other artists. 

 

Take a closer look above at this original from 1925--the only surviving painting I'm aware of among the 23 covers he completed for Judge magazine--and you immediately notice that time-telling detail.  And then we fast forward to 1937 and we see another Bolles girl checking if she's late for an appointment.  Bolles would revisit a number of themes  throughout his career. There was a time when I pondered just how he could possibly keep track of it all, considering he painted at least 663 magazine covers (and counting). He certainly could have benefitted from some system to keep from overgrazing the same territory, if nothing else.  But it doesn't appear he kept a ledger of his work and he certainly didn't keep many of his paintings around in his studio, although these two are still around.  My own theory is that it was all in his head. Bolles had an amazing memory, which included a rather freakish ability to recall (or perhaps calculate) the last time a date and day coincided in the calendar (and if you're curious, the last time December 3 fell on a Tuesday was just last year, but prior to that you'd have to go back to 2002).

 

But I digress. The fun thing about these examples is that you get to see Bolles' reinterpreting an idea in the context of the era and through his evolving style.  And if you want a closer look the Judge painting is going up for sale this weekend at Freeman's auction house.  And with that I'll bid her adieu.

Dreams of a Bolles Girl

The other night I had one of those dreams...I saw a Bolles girl.   She was up in the clouds, smiling down on me.  It wasn't just any Bolles girl, but the face from a painting that had been taunting me for years, always just out of reach.  The scene abruptly shifted and next I was walking down an empty street in a strange town.  Everywhere I looked I saw pictures of her. It had to be one of those feverish dreams I must endure from time to time, a hazard of my fixation. There were other variations, in one I actually meet Bolles, get to ask him all those questions that have been burning in me, see art never before shared. In another I find the veritable closet full of paintings. Always I awake with that brief moment of confused exaltation, only to be pulled down as the weight of reality sets in.  It was just a dream.  Only a dream. But this felt different, somehow more real. 

Next thing I know I'm walking down a long street and spot the living embodiment of a Bolles girl. Not just any Bolles girl but that same cowgirl I've been in the hunt for so long.  The closer I get the more real she seems.  And then I'm inside and there are more Bolles girls, a chorus line of them...and in the middle of their dance I see it.

The painting. Only it's not a dream.  I'm awake, not hallucinating, and am surrounded by Bolles cowgirls.  And there's the painting, perched on an easel, not one of the several copies that have shown up over the past few years but the original.  The long lost Whoopee girl.

A few months ago, after a  four year search (full story here) she was pulled out of a crawlspace in an old house, amazingly none the worse for wear after lying buried for decades.  All those false trails, the impostor paintings, and finally she emerges into the light. The painting, used for a 1934 issue of Film Fun, is in near perfect condition.  A month after the issue hit the newsstands, Harmon Peery, the mayor of Odgen, Utah wrote a letter to Lester Grady, editor of Film Fun to ask if he could have the original painting to use as a mascot for a rodeo he had started.  Just a week later the painting shows up in the mail and her second career as the Whoopee Girl began.   This year marks the 75th anniversary of her serving as the official mascot to the Pioneer Days Rodeo, which is being held now.   

Mayor Peery's grandson, Robert Peery King and the Egyptian Theater Foundation graciously invited me to the official unveiling of the painting to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Whoopee Girl and I wouldn't have missed it for the world.  The event was fabulous, and painting simply amazing.  If you are interested, you will be able to purchase giclée prints of the original painting directly from Mr. King. I've seen a version done on canvas board and it looks as close to the real thing as you can get.  Some of the proceeds will be used to help build the Pioneer Days museum, which once completed with become the permanent home of Bolles' Whoopee girl painting.

So remember fellow Bolles fans, never stop searching. Sometimes dreams do come true.

Lass Clipping

I'd forgotten I had a scan around of the original drawing of the cover featured in the previous post. Take a close look and it tells a story.  As is plainly evident, the painting was barely altered at all from this sketch.  Also clear is that it would have taken Bolles mere minutes of effort to whip this out, meaning the art editor of Spicy Stories would approve a cover based on the "barest" of efforts.  Even after producing film fun covers for nearly 20 years, Bolles often would complete fully rendered comps (detailed concept paintings done on 9 by 12" canvasboard) of potential covers for Film Fun.  I have other examples of cover concept sketches that didn't see the light of day so it's likely that he would show a batch of them at a time.  Another thing that is evident upon inspection is just how precise a line Bolles had.  He started out drawing, not painting and won, not once but twice the Charles Loring Elliot medal for drawing from the National Academy of Design.  Oh how I wish the art that got him the awards was still around.

March 11 is Johnny Appleseed Day!

I was waiting patiently for some excuse, oddball holiday or otherwise, to post this cover. It's a reprint that appeared in a 1946 issue of Breezy Stories but was likely  first published in 1937 or '38.  Out of the the 20 plus magazine titles Bolles did work for my records for Breezy are the spottiest.  Why I have no idea. 

Would you like to see my etchings?

Above we have a couple examples of 1930s ephemera; catalogs of hand colors art posters by "well known American artists" which were "personally selected" by Joseph Bonita.  More about him later.  The contents of these catalogs were claimed  to be photo reproductions of  the original paintings and included a few unremarkable landscapes, but the rest were all of the pretty girl variety. Needless to say, none of the artists were well known, although one of the few signed paintings was by Paul Von Klieben, who years later designed the Ghost Town in Knott's Berry farm and was a resident artist there.  

No, it was another artist's work, this one unattributed, that got my interest.  Initially I assumed the photos were not taken directly from actual paintings but reused from engravings, as was the case with a series of blotters produced in the 1930s from Bolles magazine covers.  The images were reproduced off the covers--not the originals--and printed on blank or black backgrounds, Bolles signature was tooled out of the image in every case where it had appeared on the magazine cover.  I very much doubt whether he saw a nickel out of it.  But then in one of the catalogs I came across an image instantly recognizable as an unpublished Bolles, and that changed everything.  Somehow Bonica had gotten his hands on unique and original material, very likely directly from Bolles himself.  And so I took a closer look.  It turned out that some of the other Bolles paintings included in the catalog were still around, including a more finished version of the sketch.

  

Better yet, I recently picked up yet another of these catalogs and it didn't have just three or four pieces by Bolles in it, but nearly 20, and of these I know that four of the original paintings are still around.  Let's hope we can add a few more to the list of survivors, especially because the catalog includes several fabulous images that are among Bolles' very best, including two paintings that made my top 10 list of original Film Fun paintings I hoped would be yet found, including the iconic motorcycle girl, oddly titled as "Slyvia" in the catalog.  

Addendum:  A few years back I somehow managed to get in touch with Bonica's grandson.  I learned that in the 1940's Bonica had moved from print to film media and was hawking 16mm movies of burlesque dancers, and later a curious movie about the atom bomb.  His grandson had no knowledge about his connection to Bolles or his 1930s art catalogs. 

Which way is she leaning?

Did you vote? Our Bolles girl is still pondering who to cast her ballot for. Let's hope she supports our party!



This is one of three issues of Breezy Stories from 1936 that the original painting is known to survive. Unfortunately my versions of both the magazine and painting leave something to be desired, and that's too bad because this cover has so much going for it. For unknowns reasons there are even more original Breezy Stories paintings from 1937 still around, and I'll get around to putting them all up on a post before long.
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On the topic of original Bolles paintings, just this week I got my hands on a copy of an art catalog from 1936 which has photos of nearly 20 Bolles originals. Over half are paintings I figured didn't survive the trip to the publisher's trash bin, and it gives me hope that at least a few are still be around somewhere, waiting to be rediscovered (expect an entire post on the catalog images sometime soon). If I had a clue where I bet we could rally together a few volunteers for some door to door "canvasing".

White is the New Black

Bolles fans worth their fodder have surely heard the resounding report that this painting sold for over 80 thousand dollars at the Heritage auction last week. It's yet another record for a Bolles and is the 10th highest price of any painting yet sold from the Martignetti collection. It is certainly a great painting, no argument from me, but it is also completely atypical for Bolles. As rare as his black themed paintings were, a magazine cover awash in white borders on treason. At least with black you have the opportunity to establish contrast, create a silhouette, craft a definitive statement. But with white all that is so much harder. Pen and ink without the ink. Which is one reason why this painting is so successful.


Bolles earlier examples indicate he wasn't quite ready to take the monochromatic plunge. To your starboard hails yet another Bolles sailor girl, with a blot of ink for Professor Rorschach to ponder. But as you can see Bolles hedged his bets and grounded her in a sky blue field. I've featured this cover before because it's a composition Bolles revisited at least two other times, and no wonder.


To our left is the other Bolles white cover, which appeared on the newsstands in 1928. I've blogged about it before, not because I find it particularly attractive but because the subject of nursing was one a lot of illustrators took up. It first became popular as a theme for war posters and also likely because it was such an revered occupation. Bolles could add some double entendres to the sailor theme (I'll say! But let's not forget that sometimes a cannon is just a cannon) but nursing was off limits, at least back in Bolles' day. My how times have changed.
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Again the thing to notice with this cover is that Bolles obviously decided white would not do without some additional embellishment and so he threw in one of his bimorphic shadows. Typically they discretely pool around the girls' shoes but this one dominates the composition, virtually propelling our nurse right off the cover. All this reinforces just how unusual the cannon girl is. Still...did you notice that thin spike of red? If you know Bolles you know there was no way he could have resisted.

Women in Black

There's no reason to revisit the theme of Bolles black unless we feature one of his most outrageous covers. Netty but Nice is simply over the top on all counts; her wild outfit, Bolles amazing treatment of all the different materials and textures, that fabulous deco chair, those shoes! Netty debuted in 1937, a great year for Film Fun and for collectors because-for reasons unknown-more Bolles paintings from 1937 to 1938 have survived than from any other period of his career. Sorry the scan is so poor but after all the years I've been collecting Bolles, this issue continues to elude me. So to make it up to you I've posted a detail out of the original painting (alas it has eluded me as well). As the side by side comparison with the printed cover-which was pretty well done- makes immediately evident, a lot of interesting detail and subtlety was lost in the reproduction. By the way, you can get a fabulous Giclee print taken from the original painting at Impact Graphic posters. For those of use who can't afford a Bolles original (and who can these days), it's the next best thing.

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The Madame X post prompted me to take a closer look at just how many cover girls in black Bolles painted and it turns out that throughout the 1930s about one Film Fun cover a year had a predominately black color scheme. Bolles did almost none for other periodicals and I think there are two reasons for this. First, just about all of his other magazine work was for magazines even spicier than Film Fun, and so the color schemes and poses typically ran at hotter temperatures. And second, the quality of printing was poorer. In some cases, covers were printed in only three colors and the lack of a black print run could add a murky atmospheric quality to the work, which is not necessarily a bad thing for horror or gangster pulps as my friend and mega-collector, the late Pete Manesis once pointed out to me. He felt that some cover artists who knew their work was going to be printed in three colors altered their palette to take advantage of the effect. But gangsters and fiends are one thing, and pretty girls another. Bolles faced a different set of challenges doing work for the smoosh mags.


Turning back to Film Fun, I think this cover from 1934 counts among his very best examples of women in black. The image by the way, was a complete swipe from a publicity photo (I've got it around somewhere and once I find it I'll add it to this post) but as usual Bolles adds his own signature to the painting, the cleverly worked shadow both grounds the pose and lends an almost geometric element to the composition. On the subject of signatures, there was a letter printed in this issue from a reader who inquired why Bolles signed some of his covers but not others. Truth is that he often did not sign his work but I've also seen a number of original Film Fun paintings with signatures that ended up being tooled or cropped out of the cover. Why that was done is the question I would have asked the editor.


Finally, a very recent "discovery" and what must be one of the wackiest Bolles covers of all. When I found this scan from a 1943 issue of Breezy Stories I had to do a double-take. How do you begin to explain it? Perhaps Netty became bored from all that posing and preening and so donned some gloves and a muffler and headed outside to catch some fresh air, glorying in the garish winter (nuclear winter?) sunset. It's almost as if Bolles was doing a riff on himself as Quintana might have interpreted the Netty girl. As bad as I'd like to have a copy of the Film Fun Netty girl issue in my collection I want this one ten times worse.

Out of the Ether

Be you a Bolles specialist or an omnivore of classic illustration art, you've likely feasted your eyes on the series of auctions of original illustration art at Heritage auctions over the past year from the Charles Martignette estate. For me its been both fabulous and frustrating because prices have skyrocketed, especially in the case of our man Bolles. The upside--even if you've been priced out of the market--is that all this interest in Bolles has brought some long lost treasures out of the closet, most of which have been consignments from other collectors.

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The upcoming auction includes the 1931 Film Fun cover displayed here, and it's the only original I'm aware of from that year that survives. Yet as excited as I am to see the painting it is also a serious source of frustration. Every time a lost Bolles shows up on the market I can't help but wonder about its backstory; who owned it and what were the circumstances by which it was acquired? Each original I've managed to have photographed has a story behind it. Unfortunately many are scant on details, though one of the other Bolles for sale in the upcoming auction has a sticker on the stretcher that says "gift of Mr. and Mrs. Irwin Winsten, 1950", not that that means anything to me.

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I've also posted the one other existing Film Fun painting of Bolles with a circus theme that I know about. The painting was done in 1935 and has its own story. It was once owned by, of all people, the girly artist Bill Ward. In a letter written to a friend he described buying the painting from an "old guy" at a flea market, recognizing it as a Bolles but not finding the signature until much later (it was tiny). He didn't say anything about the price he paid but I think it may have been around $150! Later in the letter Ward notes that Bolles could be considered the true pioneer of pinup, stating: "this guy precedes them all, before Petty, Vargas and the rest." And then he goes on to say that his very first published pinup, done at the age of 16 (!) appeared in of all magazines, an issue of Film Fun and I believe this its the final issue.

You may recall that a while back I posted a graphic that displayed surviving Film Fun paintings and am happy I'll have to update it. In fact it wouldn't bother me if I had to do this again and again. So, let's consider this: What if there were only 10 more Film Fun paintings to be found? If you could choose, which ones would they be? My own top ten list will be showing up in a post shortly. So what are your favorites?

Bolles on Ice. Very Nice!

Sorry for the long absence. Blame it on my day job.


In celebration of the winter Olympics I thought it only appropriate to feature one of the sports and also a classic theme in pinup. It was probably George Petty, with his series of paintings for the Ice Capades programs, who did more to popularize the theme of pinup on ice than any other artist. But he certainly wasn't the only illustrator to mine that vein. Our man Enoch produced some fine examples, including this one from the January 1942 issue of Film Fun. Included below for your edification is Bolles' pencil sketch for the cover. Bolles produced at least three other preliminary drawings and to me it's interesting that after nearly two decades of Film Fun covers--and in the final months of the magazine--Bolles was still at it, working on different poses to come up with just the right version.




I've also posted another nice skating cover from Breezy Stories. Sorry for the condition of this issue, but I only have the scan and am not sure what year it was published. If I had to guess it would be 1935, but the odd thing is that this cover has a 'real' Bolles signature, and not the engraved version I wrote about in a previous entry. As far as I know it's the only cover of Breezy he actually signed.

I don't know about you but I think our Bolles girl deserves a perfect score of 10 for artistry.

She didn't make the cut

Our fetching lass is known as a comp, or comprehensive sketch, in this case for a Film Fun cover that was never to be. The painting was sold at a Heritage Auction a few months back and would I ever wish I could brag that she was hanging out in my study. But alas, she exists only in my memory, or more accurately my hard drive's memory. I am lucky enough to own a comp of another Film Fun cover completed in 1941, and my guess is that this painting was done around the same time. It's curious to me that Bolles would still have been making such detailed studies, having 20 years and nearly 200 Film Fun under his belt. More so that the logo was painted in so carefully. By the way, I am pretty convinced that Bolles himself designed this logo for Film Fun, which first appeared in January of 1926 (he was a master letterer and designed other well known logos for commercial products including one long used for Bond Bread). But I have found one photo of a final Film Fun painting with the logo painted directly on it so perhaps this wasn't so unusual.
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So why didn't our Bolles girl make the cut? I think the image is lovely and I like her hairdo, which seems to be more in the vein of Rita Hayworth than the tightly coiffed Betty Grable style he often relied on. While Bolles posed a lot of his girls in beach scenes, this image doesn't match up with any of them and I think the only cover that comes even remotely close is this stunning image from 1940. By the way the original painting for this issue was offered for sale on eBay about seven years ago and if one of you happens to own it I would love to include a photo of it for my book project.

Let's just hope there are more examples like our fair beach maiden out there yet to be discovered.

Paint Me a Picture

A question by frequent visitor Gary about how many Bolles paintings got me onto this project, which is something I've been meaning to do for a long time. Here we see a graph showing all the Film Fun covers done by Enoch Bolles from 1923 to the magazine's last issue in September 1942. This doesn't include the 1942 annual as I don't know when it was published, nor 1922 which I forgot to add until it was too late (for the record Bolles painted the October and December issues). The Blanks during 1926-27 were months when Film Fun was not published, which I think corresponds to the period that Leslie-Judge was selling off the magazine. All later blanks are months when the magazine cover was done by another artist or were, egads, photos. The question marks represent paintings that survived for a time but may or may not still exist, with some of these having been extensively reworked by Bolles.
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As would be expected, the majority of the 29 original Film Fun paintings known to exist were from the later years of the magazine. What is interesting are the outlier years; three painting from 1925 are still around, 1937 with half of the year's output surviving, and 1940 where three and perhaps four of eight still exist. The 1937 trend holds for Breezy Stories and Spicy Stories. For some reason Bolles, or somebody else, held on to a lot of of paintings from 1937 through 1938. As far as I know, there's just a single surviving original painting from Gay Parisienne out of the 46 he did, and just one each from the entire run of Tattle Tales and Bedtime Stories. It also appears that no originals survive from 20 other titles Bolles did cover work for, but let's hope I'm wrong. As many of you know interest in Bolles' work has skyrocketed with record prices in recent Heritage auctions. This clearly has brought some pieces out of hiding, or perhaps just out of the den. Feast your eyes on this cover for the March 1938 issue of Spicy Stories that Heritage will be selling in their upcoming illustration auction. Until I saw it I had no idea the original was still around and let's hope there's more where she came from. If you have information on original Bolles paintings or corrections to my 'statistics' I'd love to hear from you!

International Eat an Apple Day!

Ok, so it was yesterday, but I'm not about to wait another year, simply to be calendarically correct. The Breezy Stories is a 1944 reprint from an issue I would bet was published in 1937 or '38. For whatever reason a very large proportion of Bolles originals that survive were painted during this two year period. It's too bad this cover suffers from such lousy printing but below I have reprinted the original painting, or what became of it. Bolles reworked a number of his paintings a

nd again, most were originally done in 1937 or 1938. In my estimation the original is preferable to the repaint, but it does show how richer his

palette was than what appeared in the printed version. I also think the repainting may have been a sort of warm-

up for his cover for the April, 1942 cover of Film Fun which could well be considered his most

brazen. I'll do an entire post on her soon and so you can judge for yourself.

The $ Game

Yesterday Heritage auctions sold off another wing from the warehouse of works from the Martignetti collection. The prices for the Bolles paintings on the auction block as well as some of his other pinups were in a word, astonishing. The previous record for Bolles at auction was a bit over 38 grand at an Illustration House auction held several years ago. It was the painting was for this cover of Breezy Stories published in 1937 (for some reason a lot of paintings from 1937 have survived) and when you look at the magazine cover (gotta love that nameplate) it's easy to see why bidders were so motivated.

But the prices realized yesterday put Bolles in a whole new ballgame. His top item was the Slipping Beauty cover for the February, 1935 issue of Film Fun. There's no doubt that it is a special Bolles but I was shocked to see that when the mallet fell the winning bid topped $65,000! It went more than the Petty's, the Vargas pinups for Playboy and even a really nice Elvgren (though two other Elvgren's went for an incomprehensible 200 grand!!). Unless pinup collecting has suddenly become a hobby of Goldman Sachs traders, it is hard to fathom this recent surge of interest. On one hand I'm pleased to see works of Enoch Bolles gaining wider recognition and interest (you can see a video of a couple of the paintings and other nice examples from Martignetti's collection at the Heritage auction web site) but on the other hand it bodes poorly for many collectors who might hope someday to own their own original. A few people have given me a bit of grief for contributing to this trend, but I sincerely doubt that anything I've written about Bolles has had an impact on this. I hope not, at least not until after I get my hands on that one particular Bolles original I pray is still out there sitting in somebody's closet, begging for a new home.

The Skin Game

I've just been reading a recent post in an art blog (to remain anonymous) which I typically enjoy, but not today. The post is on the topic of skin. High praise is accorded to classic artists and illustrators who dutifully chart every scar, mole, blemish and age spot. But when the example turns to pin-up artists the tone of the goes red. It is true, pin-up artists invariably make skin tones pure and rosy, glowing without the slightest taint of imperfection that the blogger and his pantheon of followers hold so praiseworthy. Not surprisingly the entire genre of pin-up received repeated lashings from the tip of a wet Windsor & Newton Kolinsky Sable brush. One comment in particular zeroed in on our man Bolles with a particularly snooty aside (comparing his girls to Gumby!) and as you might anticipate, that set me off. But first, a personal disclosure. Generally speaking I am not a pin-up fan. There are yards of it that I find insipid, misogynistic, poorly rendered or just plain dumb (think Art Frahm). But there is the good stuff and of course there is Enoch Bolles, who we all know by now was much more than just a pin-up artist. Plus it is simply unfair to compare salon artists with commercial illustrators who in the case of Bolles had the responsibility of eight mouths to feed while the economy was sunk in deep depression. Even back in his day there was a snobbery about what was called art-art versus commercial art. The debate was so serious that the guys who ran the big billboard companies would occasionally go to the absurd extreme of pasting up reproductions of classical paintings on outdoor billboards. Others claimed the art in their ads was the equivalent of fine art and so they were doing the public a service (Ha!).

Miriam Hopkins, by Enoch Bolles circa 1935. Unpublished as far as I know. As much as I admire Bolles' treatment of her skin, it's the amazing attention to her hair that really jumps out. This example should put to rest the notion that Bolles was merely a 'cartoonist'.

But back to Bolles. Skin-or at least skin color-was something he obsessed over all his life. He did not resort to tube colors or other quick fixes and in fact was continually tinkering with how to get it just right. He was trained in classic methods of painting by Robert Henri and other instructors at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design and was a keen observer of classic artists (one of these days I'll get around to posting his commentary on the techniques he thinks were used to paint the Mona Lisa). To give you an idea of Bolles' passion for getting "picture making" right, I've transcribed portions of two among the dozens of letters he exchanged with his daughter, Liza, who was a talented artist in her own right. Their correspondence involved a discussion of both theory and technique and they also exchanged study paintings. It's worth pointing out that Enoch was writing these letters from a mental hospital where he had spent nearly three decades! If there is any evidence against him "dying a mad-man" as as been claimed, then this is it. His writing reveals him to be engaged both intellectually and culturally. He was widely read and knowledgeable about an amazing range of subjects. But best of all the letters revealed his keen sense of humor and kindliness. The reality having to endure life in a hospital that housed over 7,000 patients did not rob Bolles of his humanity or sap his spirit.

Note: these are exerpts out of much longer letters. You'll notice that Enoch uses a sort of short-hand to describe certain techniques.

Enoch to daughter Liza, September, 1965 (subject: on painting a mango)

In your tilts with paints have you discovered that doing that tantalizing surface, or human skin, or an egg, depends upon a delicate progressive graying of the color from the third lighted hue on down? Lesson: mix orangy color of mango, red and yellow-this paled with white is your #2 circle with tiny bit of white in centre, #1. (Note: there is an illustration in the letter that corresponds to these numbers). To #2 mixture (orange and white) add very slightest amount of color (orange, red and yellow) and imperceptible amount of graying (blue) which will be #3, these three being your highlight. Now to #3 add small amount of color (orange) and gray slightly with blue and you have #4, the first halation from highlight. Add more color and slightly more blue #5, second halation. To this add enough color to be the true color of mango, gray slightly, #6. From here down in narrowing courses, enough in number to meet shadow, continue to add color plus red, more and more red as tone darkens and gray these with blue or black. This is not complicated after you have tried, made your mis-mixtures, finally got color and form. Of course mangos, vary in color but win your knowledge with one color of orange or light orange. If you haven't already mastered this you will be surprised by the illusion of color and form right up to the tiny brightest spot which is so important. You'll need red sable water color brush [illustrated in the letter] and of course, small flat red sable oil brushes. You will need many goes to get right mixtures and smooth blending but then you'll have a fascinating toy that most or many, painters don't have. Think of it this way; #6 is the color of mango-all above that is a sort of light-cap spreading over lighter than the true color part. Below #6 is easier, local color going down into redder hues properly grayed.

Enoch to Liza, 1968 (They had been mailing an oil portrait painted by Liza back and forth)

Our girls' neck is too dark, too red in front. Don't try for sterno-mastoid here, it would confuse you. Be led by the treatment of the copy I sent you. General color of light on front of neck, grayed red with tiny addition of yellow to match appearance but not quite brightness of face. Then match my spots of pink on cheeks and carry almost full length of cheek. Not pure pink. No made with parent color which I think was vermilion with little yellow added. Grayed of course by mixing vermilion with hue next above it and tiny bit of black. Be careful to match my grayed pink.

Now with the tiny reflected light. It is dependent upon the so-called third line which separates it from darkest lighted part of face as you see-in flesh this third line is usually made with red, black, very little which. The reflected light is usually red (more orange) bit of black, much lighter as you see, yet it can be the color of the reflecting light, whatever that may be. In modeling a garment, which the third line can be blue, almost pure, an illusion in bright lighting. Look at this old Leyendecker Post cover, double lighted, warm, cool. You will see third line running between the lights everywhere.

Portrait of a Girl

I was stuck, oh was I stuck. What to do for a post? The time had come to give a rest to the "wacky day" celebration (mind you, a temporary rest). For now, no more of the variations on the "which came first, the photo or the painting?" theme, though I've got a sheaf of them. There are some really good posts in the works, but those have to be doled out carefully. Today was one of those days I wished this was a blog where you can open up the newspaper and start typing about the first thing that catches your eye. And so I did, and then I spotted an article in the New York Times about the lone surviving Ziegfeld Follies girl. My post had just written itself.

It was four years ago that I got a phone call from her, all 101 years young at the time. Her name is Doris Eaton, and at the age of 14 she became the youngest girl ever to be hired by Florenz Ziegfeld. The year was 1918. Now she is the only one of them remaining. Her older sister was Mary Eaton, she was the more famous but her life went awry and she suffered a sad ending, which seemed an all too common fate among the Ziegfeld girls. So why did she call me?

I had recently learned about a very unusual Bolles portrait that had changed hands, allegedly the subject in the painting was a Ziegfeld Girl. After a time I was successful in contacting the new owner of the painting, Sherrie, who was very supportive, but unfortunately I learned that the seller could provide little information about the painting beyond that the Ziegfled Girl in the portrait was named Marilyn, and that she had died at an early age. That part was true for Mary Eaton as well as for Marilyn Miller, one of the most famous Ziegfeld Girls of them all. She died from complications of alcoholism at the age of 37 (she was played in different movies by June Haver and Judy Garland). But there were several other Ziegfeld girls who went by Marilyn and Mary. So who was the girl in the painting?

It just so happened that Sherrie lives in my home town so on a trip I was able to meet her and see the painting first hand. The most likely candidate for the girl in the painting was Marilyn Miller but side by side comparisons with photos left me unconvinced (don't forget, this is not one of those posts so you're not going to see them) and that's where the story ended, for a while. Sometime later I learned that there was a Ziegfeld Girl named Doris Eaton, who was not only still alive and kicking, but hoofing with the best of them. So I sent a scan of the painting to the publisher of her recent book Century Girl and asked to have it sent along to Mrs. Eaton (it seems wrong to call her by her first name) to see if she recognized her. This was the sort of thing I've done from time to time after starting this project, and I had little confidence it would generate any sort of response. But a week later I got a call on the phone. Her voice was as gnarled as an old walnut but also just as strong. I was flabbergasted and for a few seconds was speechless before I could blubber out a response. On the phone was a lifeline to a time long past; a women who heard George Gershwin play her family's piano, met Babe Ruth and posed for Alfred Cheney Johnston (demurely I might add). Mrs. Eaton told me she examined the scan of the painting and concluded it was a "configuration" of several Ziegfeld Girls rather than a portrait of a particular person. She added she was certain it was not either her sister or Marilyn Miller and it was quite evident from her tone that the memories and images were still sharp in her mind. We spoke for a few more minutes, and I think I recall her saying that she left the Follies after a couple years to go to England to make movies. I thanked Mrs. Eaton for her time and hung up, my brief connection to another era was cut. It felt like the end of a classic movie when the theatre goes dark.

Desperately hunting for an Easter egg

After the pain of pulling together today's post, it may be a long while before you have to endure another of my blathering entries where I preen about having found the just perfect the Bolles art to celebrate some obscure pseudoholiday. Truth be told I was completely stymied by Easter. Out of my 'collection' of over 530 Bolles magazine covers (alas, the vast majority are merely scans) I couldn't find a single suitable example. Even Hugh Ward did a cover that as a stretch could be considered more of an Easter theme, featuring a cute chick hatching out of her egg. Ok, so it's actually some bizarre take on celebrating the new year, and what's with her weird arm pose? (One more thing about this cover, the exposed navel and low bikini line are very provocative for 1937. No wonder this magazine could only be purchased in smoke shops and pool halls).
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So the closest I could come was the cover to a 1937 issue of Spicy Stories. A very nice image to be sure but one that I had planned on saving for Magic Top Hat Day, Cartoon Bunnies Week or something of the like. To assuage my guilt and keep you from tuning out (if you haven't already) I'm sweetening this post by including something quite unusual, the original pencil sketch for the magazine cover. Alas, it is not in the best of shape but the drawing is quite revealing. For one the final painting is nearly an exact duplication of the sketch. The bunnies are even cuter and chubbier in the painting, and the top hat is larger, but that's about it. I've also included a swipe of the cover by Earle Bergey. He clearly had no trouble with the girl's anatomy (though the shoes should have gone back into the closet) but there is nothing nice that can be said about his Easter bunny, which looks more like an albino jack rabbit. She should stuff him back in the hat and try again.

Lost and Found!

So the very day I get the devastating news that the Whoopee Girl painting was not really who we thought she was, I received an email that included this photo. Here we have yet another original Bolles painting which was done for the a cover of the October, 1925 issue of Film Fun. What a thrill to see a Bolles that was long thought lost and one of his earliest surviving magazine covers. This painting is being sold at auction on March 21 by Hap Moore and no I am not getting a cut nor do I have any commercial association with this auction house. For me finding a "new" original is the ultimate Bolles discovery and I simply wanted to share this with bloggers who may feel the same way, and who may have the urge to get their own original . There's a bigger scan of the painting at the auction site. Do a search using "Bolles" and you'll find it.

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Finally if you take a look at the image as it appears on the cover (scan courtesy of Mark Forer), you'll notice the engraver left off the ties and that the image was cropped right at the bottom of the piling. No water can be seen.