18 ARTS & LIVING I WINTER 2008

IndelibleImpressionsA designer, painter and illustrator, Eyvind Earle washand-picked by Walt Disney in the 1950s to createthe backgrounds for Sleeping Beauty.

AL_80 page + cover wi08 FINAL:Layout 1 11/13/08 12:04 PM Page 18

WINTER 2008 I ARTS & LIVING 19

ART

Originally, Sleeping Beauty looked alot like Audrey Hepburn; she wassofter, rounder, more like the‘designy’ Disney girl.” –Ron Dias, animation artist

Were you to sit in on a discussion among the retiredanimators of Disney, you would hear very littleabout the backgrounds. As the word implies, theyretreat not only from the action of the scene but

also from conversation, replaced by a celebration of characterwhich, they will tell you, should always outshine the setting.An exception would be the “establishing shot,” the scene,

absent of characters, designed to give context to the story andprepare the viewer for the mood and the moment when theaction will begin.“Some of the most beautiful establishing shots,” said Disney

animator Ron Dias, “are in Snow White, where you see thecastle, the grounds, the sky, the clouds, all setting you up forwhat will come. Finally, you get inside the castle to find themagic mirror on the wall, and you understand that this is wherethe queen lives.”The other exception would be the artistry of the late Eyvind

Earle, who became a background painter for Walt DisneyStudios in 1951. Although he worked on such noted films asFor Whom the Bulls Toil, Melody, Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom,Paul Bunyan and Lady and the Tramp, perhaps his most leg-endary contribution to Disney animation was his revolutionarybackground and style for the 1959 release of Sleeping Beauty.“If it weren’t for Eyvind, we wouldn’t have ‘Sleeping

Beauty,’” said Dias, who mentored under the late artist. “Waltchose him specifically. The beginning of Disney was veryEuropean, what I call a moving tapestry. Walt wanted it to havea very Renaissance Flemish, Germanic look, and Eyvind’sunique style really fit the bill. But the characters had alreadybeen designed, and they didn’t work with such a stylized back-ground at all. Sleeping Beauty was the only film I know of thatwent back to the drawing board, literally. Because of Eyvind.”

It is unusual to take style direction from a backgroundpainter. But in order to make the mood and magic and fantasyand elegance come to life on the screen, one needs to create amarriage between background and foreground.“Originally,” said Dias, “Sleeping Beauty looked a lot like

Audrey Hepburn; she was softer, rounder, more like the‘designy’ Disney girl. Back at the drawing board, Eyvindredesigned her. She became very angular, moving with morefluidity and elegance, but her design had a harder line. Theedges of her dress became squarer, pointed even, and the backof her head came almost to a point rather than round and cud-dly like the other Disney girls. It had to be done to complementthe background.”It was unprecedented for an entire animation department to

come together and take direction from the background painter,to design something so unlike anything that had ever beenpainted. But they did. Each looked over Earle’s shoulder andlearned to paint in the signature high-contrast, clean lines anduncluttered style of the master.Earle had just come of age in 1937 when he embarked on a

self-guided painting tour by bicycle across the country. With

“

Opposite page: “Santa Ynez Memory.” Below “Paradise.” © Eyvind Earle Publishing LLC

AL_80 page + cover wi08 FINAL:Layout 1 11/13/08 12:04 PM Page 19

110 pounds of baggage, $21 in his pocket and a whole lot ofwatercolor paper, he left his mother in Los Angeles andpainted his way to his grandmother’s home in New York.During 42 days of traveling, he painted 42 watercolors andwrote a 10,000-word journal; all of which chronicled his trip.Three months later, he presented his watercolors in his

first one-man exhibition at the Charles Morgan Galleries inNew York City. It was nearly a sell-out show.Emily Genauer, then critic for the New York World

Telegram, reviewed the exhibit and said, “…he has capturedwith his brush the quality of the air after a rain in the desert,of moonlight on a still night in the mountains, of winterwinds sweeping across unbroken fields clothed by autumn insavage garb. There is poetry in them and imagination andextraordinary delicacy of tone and brush.”

Toward the end of his life, Earle reacquired one of his“bicycle trip watercolors” by exchanging it for one of hismore recent paintings.“It’s wonderful to see it again,” he said at the time. “I see

in this piece that I painted as well then, as I do now.” Hepaused, perhaps returning to the fall of 1937 and the youngman who painted that watercolor. “I paint now as I paintedthen. I don’t plan it; I just paint. Most of the time I don’tknow what it will be when I finish, but it’s always a welcomesurprise.”

In honor of its 50th anniversary, a digitally remastered editionof Sleeping Beauty was released on Oct. 7. Eyvind Earle’s art-work remains on exhibition at Gallery 21 on Sixth betweenDolores and Lincoln in Carmel. Call 831-625-1738 or visitwww.gallery21.com.•

©Eyvind

Earle

Publishing

LLC

Visit artsandlivingmag.com to see more images of Eyvind Earleand Sleeping Beauty.www

20 ARTS & LIVING I WINTER 2008

© Disney Enterprises, Inc.Sleeping Beauty’s castle from the original 1959 Disney film. Eyvind Earle also worked on Peter Pan(1942) and Lady and the Tramp (1955). Impressed by Earle’s work, Disney put him in charge ofstyling, background and color for Sleeping Beauty.

AL_80 page + cover wi08 FINAL:Layout 1 11/13/08 12:04 PM Page 20

When Eyvind Earle was hired to paint the backgrounds for Disney’soriginal 1959 film Sleeping Beauty he recreated the image of PrincessAurora to complement the scenery, making her more angular andgraceful rather than soft and cuddly as originally envisioned.

©Eyvind

Earle

Publishing

LLC

Eyvind Earle painted all of his stunning images by hand.Today they are reproduced individually using a complexhand-pulled serigraph process.

WINTER 2008 I ARTS & LIVING 21

prises, Inc.

© Disney Enterprises, Inc.

AL_80 page + cover wi08 FINAL:Layout 1 11/13/08 12:04 PM Page 21