Eyvind Earle
When I first saw Eyvind Earle’s paintings, they immediately reminded me of the background paintings for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. After doing a little digging around, turns out that Eyvind actually was a background painter at Disney, and did indeed work on Sleeping Beauty!
You should check out the Sleeping Beauty DVD. There is an old featurette in the Special FEatures that features Earle, as well as others. As a matter of fact, it even shwos Earle painting a background. It’s cool to watch… I might have to watch it this evening, as a matter of fact!
Rest in peace ,great painter!!!
Those are some seriously beautiful paintings. I especially like “Poppies” in the Originals section. The colors are just fantastic.
-J
Ooohh Sleeping Beauty was my FAVORITE!
Loved the look of it. I have a old old vhs of it, now I’ll definitely have to get the DVD.
Yes, Eyvind is amazing. He did the backgrounds to TOOT and MELODY, which I mention on my bloggity-blog. C’mon, John — you should be paying better attention than that!
You’re just now learning his name? Actually I kind of envy that. There are lots of gems by him for you to discover in the Disney canon.
Does anyone else think that the trees look like fractals?
You shame me, Ward! I’ll go back in my hole now…
Fantastic work. I just found your blog today via a friend and love it. I’m linking over from my own – brilliant work you’re showcasing here, thank you!
I’m constantly mesmerized by his work.
EE was just a master. I recently discovered his work on an old Reader’s Digest LP collection I picked up. You can see it in my Flickr set: http://photos21.flickr.com/25523980_4ffd26aaf6.jpg
John Canemaker’s book BEFORE THE ANIMATION BEGINS: THE ART AND LIVES OF DISNEY INSPIRATIONAL SKETCH ARTISTS has a nice chapter of Earle. Eyvind also wrote an autobiography, HORIZON BOUND ON A BICYCLE. There’s only a couple chapters devoted to his animation work, but he had a fascinating life overall. Earle also gets quite a bit of attention (with a lot of unpublished art) in my upcoming book on 50s animation design, which will be published by Chronicle Books in April 2006.
No doubt a master… one of my all time faves. One of the more interesting details of his work on Sleeping Beauty was that he worked on it for so long. It was like over 5 years, he was one of the few artists DIsney employed that didn’t get shipped off to WWII and practically had the movie to himself. There are some nice featurettes on the DVD, also on the Laserdisc from back in the day!
Edco, where did you get your info about Earle and WWII? The movie came out in 1959, well after the war was over. Using a five-year production cycle, that goes back only to ‘54, also well after the war ended.
There were plenty of Disney staffers at the studio during WWII, including Ward Kimball and Frank and Ollie, all of whom were working on war-related projects. I think you may be mixing up a couple of different elements of Disney history.
Weren’t background designs for Sleeping Beauty based on Mary Blair concept art?
if i remember right, evynd earle painted ALL the backgrounds on that film. all of them, as he worked on the film for 8 years.
dany
danyboom.com
Wow, lots of misinformation floating around out there. Please folks, read Canemaker’s book, it’ll answer your questions. Earle was hired at Disney in 1951, so his time at Disney had nothing to do with WWII. Mary Blair didn’t do any concept art for SLEEPING BEAUTY. If she did, it couldn’t have been more than a couple pieces and those would have been done free-lance because she’d already left the studio by the time Earle became art director in 54. And Eyvind Earle did not paint all the bgs on the film. There was a large crew of layout artists who drew the bgs and another crew of painters who did the finished bgs. The painters include some really talented folks like Walt Peregoy, Frank Armitage, Ralph Hulett and Tony Rizzo, among others.
Yes, Eyvind just became the poster-boy for all the SLEEPING BEAUTY backgrounds because he was more vocal about it in the press, as well as out-living most of the guys to still talk about it. Funny how it works out that way. Plus, with the short promo clip in the DVD set that shows how he worked on the backgrounds that was shot back in the day, it kinda set that misinformation in stone.
Thanks, Amid for setting us straight!
Stunning, thankyou.
This is my favorite:
http://www.gallery21.com/Original_As_the_shadows_deepened_earle.htm
The gallery is selling the original, I just called for a price. It can be yours for a mere $70,000.
Doesn’t make it any less amazing though.
My bad, Paul, I must have remembered incorrectly from the documentary on that old laser. I just knew he had worked on the film for many more years than average. Tho thanks to Amid and Ward, I’m inclined to dig into some old books and movies to do some more research!