Woman in Pink
Enoch Bolles · 1929
- Artist
- Enoch Bolles (1883–1976)
- Dated
- 1929
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Reuse
- Public domain in the US
Film Fun, October 1929 (cover image, original art)Source record & reuse status
Woman in Pink, an oil painting by Enoch Bolles used as a Film Fun cover image in 1929. A smiling woman in a pink costume and gold boots sits on a sofa with her legs crossed. The page shows the painting, not the printed cover, so the lettering that would have framed it is absent.
What the painting shows
The figure takes nearly the whole height of the canvas. Bolles puts the brightest pink on the body and lets the sofa fall to a duller rose, so the outline stays sharp without a hard edge. The smile is aimed at the viewer and the pose is relaxed in a way that costs the artist control: hands, ankles and the tilt of the head all have to agree.
The source record carries conflicting information about the issue month, so this page states the year only. The image is the original artwork as it was photographed for the archive.
Why the un-lettered version is useful
Cover illustrations were designed to sit under a masthead and a price. Seeing the painting alone shows what Bolles left empty: the upper right of the canvas is quiet, which is where the title would have gone. Composition on a newsstand is a negotiation between the picture and the type, and half of it is invisible once the type is printed.
It also shows the costume as a drawing problem. Pink on pink has to be separated by value, not by outline, and the gold boots exist to give the eye somewhere to stop.
