A June bride gets unexpected company in this whimsical painting by Henry Clive, created as cover art for for the June 15, 1930 issue of The American Weekly, a syndicated supplement in William Randolph Hearst newspapers across the country. Part of the cover series “The Fashionable Working Girl” which showcased Great Depression-era flappers and gently satirized the social lives of independent city girls, this is installment # 7 – The Bride. The painting is handsomely framed under glass and a departure from the straightforward glamour images which Clive generally favored in his covers for The American Weekly.
By the 1930s Clive had been working for Hearst for over a decade, and the artist was widely known for his fashionable pin up covers. The American Weekly had a circulation of over 50,000,000 in its heyday and scintillated readers with tales of intrigue and chorus girl gossip. Though the somewhat lurid interior featured reader attracting high society scandals that today seem like the stuff of legend, the art direction stands the test of time and the illustrators employed by the publication include some of the greats of the golden age of illustration.