The Verdict Was, Wow!
Gil Elvgren · 1947
- Artist
- Gil Elvgren (1914–1980)
- Dated
- 1947
- Medium
- Painting
- Reuse
- Public domain in the US
1947Source record & reuse status
The Verdict Was, Wow!, a 1947 painting by Gil Elvgren. A woman in a green dress and red hat sits on a chair, one arm along the back of it. The red hat is the first thing you see; the green dress gives it something to push against; the background stays quiet so both colours hold their place.
Reading the composition
Follow the shape of the hat, then the angle of the arms, then the line of the chair. The pose reads as casual and is built from three crossing diagonals that stop the figure sliding out of the frame. Elvgren's work is often dismissed as smooth; the smoothness is load-bearing, because it hides how much arrangement the picture needs.
On this page the painting is mounted on a scarlet field rather than cropped to fit the grid, which is how it survives being reproduced small.
Calendar art and the end of the tradition
Elvgren (1914–1980) painted calendar girls through the 1940s and into the 1950s, the last decade in which the form was a mass medium. After that the same images moved into photography and then into advertising, and the painting trade that made them thinned out.
This painting is dated 1947 in the source record and is recorded as public domain in the United States because copyright was not renewed. Copyright outside the United States can differ, and this page makes no worldwide claim.
