More racy Royal Enfield artwork from 1930

This was the best I could do to enhance a 95-year-old magazine clipping.

 Found: a rare illustration of a roaring 1930 Royal Enfield motorcycle and its speed-obsessed rider and his pretty girlfriend. 

Last week I wrote how I had noticed the artwork in the official scrapbooks of the historic Royal Enfield factory in Redditch, UK. A black-and-white magazine photo of it and its caption were pasted into one scrapbook. 

I'd never seen this image before, anywhere. 

According to the caption, the image was available to Royal Enfield dealers as a poster, to be displayed in their windows. It would have advertised the 1930 Royal Enfield motorcycles inside the dealership. 

The caption also said that the posters were in color (the magazine clipping, of course was printed only in black and white). 

I took the liberty of using an artificial intelligence program to colorize the image in the clipping. After all, the original had been in color, so this wasn't cheating.

Color made it look even better, although the dot-pattern "screen" used by the magazine reduced detail.

To find out more about the artwork I emailed Bob Murdoch, archivist at the Royal Enfield Owners Club UK, which possesses the scrapbooks. Bob had laboriously photographed the many pages of the scrapbooks, and had shared these with me.

Had he ever noticed this image?

After all, this was one clipping on one page among hundreds of pages. To my surprise, he replied the next day:

"I do recognize this picture from the historic artwork folder of the Archives and have attached our copy, which you'll note is not a color painting, but a newsprint-prepared black and white print."

Despite the dot pattern you can see the detail. (REOC Archive)

So the club had the image, a much better copy than the magazine clipping in the scrapbook! Unfortunately, it still had the dot pattern, and was still black and white.

But Bob was able to tell me a lot (and there was another surprise coming).

"Most of Royal Enfield's publicity images were created by line-tracing photographs with ink on a semi-transparent film laid on top of the photo. These were then enhanced with color, shade and movement lines, which is a very effective method for capturing correct detail and perspective.

"So, the painting mentioned would have been a color 'wash' of such a tracing. I was a technical illustrator in the aerospace industry for several years, so I recognize the method used. 

"Among the factory photographs there are quite a few posed riders on bikes, clearly for this purpose. My favorite one which comes to mind is the 1958 Crusader and rider balanced on a brick at a sporty angle, which was pen-and-washed for the 1958 advert/brochure."

Did the Archive have an original photo of a couple posing for the illustration that interested me?

"Unfortunately, no such photo survives of our adventurous couple in question, but one other aspect (from a different angle) was traced and enhanced from the same photoshoot. You'll see from the front number (license) plate that this is a Model JL of 1930."

Wait, there is another version of the speeding Royal Enfield, rider and pretty girl?

A different pose for the rider and best of all, no dot pattern.

Yes, and Bob attached a scan of that, too. It's still black and white, but it has NO screen pattern, meaning it's as fresh as the copy-artist made it.

I like it even better. Note how much more lifelike and realistic the rider looks in this version. I would bet that his friends could identify the fellow who posed for it.

Interestingly, this version of the image IS signed by an artist; you can see "H. Wilson" clearly in the lower right corner.

This time the artwork is signed: H. Wilson.

Unlike the first version, with the rider crouching low, I did find this second version on the Internet.

It appears, without explanation, in the humor section of Motorcycle Timeline, labelled "Joy of the Road." It is screened there, so it's likely it was published someplace in its day.

Readers, had you seen it before?

Found by Motorcycle Timeline, this version is labelled "The Joy of the Road."