Yet Another Swipe

Today's entry features perhaps Enoch's best cover for Judge, the magazine that launched his career as a cover artist back a decade earlier in 1914. The theme of dancers doing the Can-Can brings to mind cover art to French magazines of the time such as La Vie Parisienne and Le Sourire which featured the works of talented artists who specialized in the female form, particularly George Barbier, Chéri Herouard, Georges Léonnec. I'm not alone in wondering if our man Enoch may have been influenced by their creations, particularly covers such as this where his girls look like they could be kicking up their heels in the Moulin Rouge. Bolles produced other examples in the 1920s that seemed to have a bit of French flair to them.

I've long kept an eye out for any whiff of a connection, be it a hint of inspiration or wholesale imitation. And finally, I've uncovered the smoking gun, but it was pointed in the wrong direction. It turns out it wasn't Bolles who was being influenced. This double truck illustration appeared in Le Sourier five years after Bolles painted his dance line. The poses of the first four girls on the left match up closely with the Judge ' cover, and the differences are most evident in their faces and headdresses. The remainder of the lineup is a variation on a single pose. So while clearly not an exact duplicate, the work certainly qualifies as a serious swipe.

 

     

Bolles' influence on American pinup illustrators has been well documented, the surprise is that he also had an impact on the French school, especially given the ephemeral nature of periodicals like Judge. The covers of  unsold magazines were typically torn off by distributors, and the daughter of one of his Enoch's art editors once told me that he would home stacks of magazines to burn in their fireplace. It makes one wonder how any copies ever made it across the pond.
 

Enoch Bolles has teed up for Women's Golf Day

After a hiatus our man Bolles is back on the course and teeing up for today's official celebration of Women's Golf Day. But don't be mistaken, this 1936 cover of Spicy Stories is nowhere near the first time a Bolles girl showed up on the fairway. 

The earliest example appeared in 1925 on the cover of Laughter, a short-lived humor rag very much along the lines of Judge, the magazine where Bolles began his career and was still doing the occasional cover for. His covers for Laughter represent a real departure, not thematically but because of the total absence of white backgrounds. Instead Bolles uncharacteristically turned to saturated primaries and deep hues that completely filled the backgrounds.  

The final example for today appeared a year earlier, not on a magazine but from what was then called a Street car card. During this time Bolles was not only churning out covers for several monthly and bi-monthly periodicals but also painting scores of ads that were slotted in the space above windows in trolleys and busses. Many of these images were dramatically rescaled for other uses from blotters to billboards. Bolles plays it straight with this image but he played with a variety of looks and other examples toe closer to the style of the Laughter cover.    

But despite these and other examples, Bolles never once set foot on a golf course.