Wright, David - Evening Dress, The Sketch, Oct 16 (1946)

Another gorgeous David Wright ‘lovely’, but this one more emblematic of Wright's ability to convery femininity and sensuality via what you can't see, not what you can see. This piece was entitled, 'Evening Dress', which is most certainly not what the subject of this piece is wearing, although negligees post-WWII in the UK did supposeldy come to more closely resemble an evening dress style, just much more light, lacy and transparent. Wright may have just been being cute with the title, or he may have been refelcting slang termiology of the moment.

This piece was a pin-up done in original goauche and included in the October 16, 1946, edition of Sketch Magazine, the British illustrated weekly journal (primarily a society magazine) that ran for almost 3,000 issues from 1893 to 1959.

Wright subsequently repurposed the pin-up as a pulp fiction cover for the book, 'The Twilight of the Gods' by 'Colette' (Stoke-on-Trent: R&L Locker, 1947).

Th pin-up version of the piece was also featured on page 105 of Terry Parker’s ‘Sirens: The Pin-Up Art of David Wright’, the definitive examination of David Wright’s commercial illustration and pin-up work. The book cover verison was featured on page 167 of the same book.