Water Color Exhibits of Western Artists Shown At Art Gallery
Boise, Idaho

Boise art lovers walked in on one of the finest water color exhibits ever shown in Idaho when the gallery opened today with a showing of western artists.
Easily outstanding are the magnificent creations of Paul Whitman of Carmel, CA whose water colors cover the far wall of the south gallery.
They are in two groups; one painted in Chichicastenango, Mexico, including Market Place, Barber Shop and Worship, the later a beautifully composed and delicately handled depiction of a cathedral entrance in the land of the Aztecs. Market Place leaps out from the wall at you with a photographic quality that is almost startling.
The California scenes from Whitman’s brush have captured the gray-green serenity of the central coast. They are Adobe in Carmel Valley, Monterey Cypress, and Barn and Pigs.
The wall at the right of Whitman is covered with the unusual water colors of one of America’s most unusual young artists – Eyvind Earle, who blew into New York on a bicycle this spring carrying an armload of paintings he made en route from Hollywood. At the age of 21 he sold the most canvases at New York’s recent modern exhibit.
Of Eyvind Earle it might be said that he paints the heart of what he sees – in perfect contrast to the simple detailed photography of Whitman.
There are other water colors in the gallery; E. J. Bird’s Windy Monday relieves the monotony of the north gallery with its bright, fresh color.
Waldo Midgley has a fine delineation of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City.
Milton Wassmer’s quaking asp is brilliant.
Ethel Shauser has some mist-mantled snowy peaks.
In the foyer Veria Birrell’s Monterey Bay scenes are pleasant but undistinguished.
There are some flowers and still life of which the same might be said.
It is a well-balanced exhibit and one that should attract crowds for some time.
One attendant asked me today: “I wonder if the good Boise people know all these paintings are for sale?”


Earle paintings at Museum moody, nostalgic, lonely
By Douglas Hale, Ph.D.

We live in such trouble times!
Students, with success stuffed down their throats by selfish parents who want them to get ahead, students from poverty backgrounds forced to go to college by brutal grants and scholarships riot, invade and damage academic buildings, and in other ways indicate what delicate little psyches they have.
Some even drop out and hip it for a while on checks from home or panhandling, until flushed out into the open, for free medical attention, by hepatitis, or worse.
Artists’ hearts, we are told by art authorities, bleed for these unfortunates, and their work ought to express the sadness that the public cannot find time for- does not have the talent for – expressing. In passing, that most of those who write so well about art have never lifted a brush, except Tom Sawyer, is all to the good: too much understanding and we might have next to nothing on the subject.
SOME ARTISTS, however, seem to think that art is made to enjoy, not to make the viewer suffer vicariously. If Eyvind Earle, exhibiting his paintings at the Martin Gallery, Scottsdale, is trying to make anyone unhappy, his show is a miserable failure. Some of the Earle pictures are moody, nostalgic, sad, lonely, and so on, but all moods achieved are through aesthetic effort, not subject matter. Escape art? Could be. But does vicarious suffering really help the world’s unfortunates?
Judged by his work, Earle is a mood painter, an artist of many facets, He has his severe side, evidenced by his straight – lined barn scenes, hard edged, but not in the cliché sense of that expression, and exemplifies by such as “Patterned Barns,” “White Barns,” “Long Barns,” and so on. Sometimes he takes this puritan mood further into the country and the result is “Purple Mesas,” etc.
ALMOST AS SEVERE moods produced are such careful-loose landscapes as “Zig-Zag Ridge,” “Z Hills,” “Mustard Fields” and others. In watercolor we have “Purple Hills,” “Shoreline,” “Desert Mountains.”
In most of these paintings the artist does not show, or, to be fair, not give way much to color sensitivity, tending to depend more on strong value relationships. This is especially so when he works in what might be called – and perhaps unfairly- his Nipponese manner.
Long ago – surely long ago (could not have become that skilled overnight) – Eyvind Earle became enamored of space and its uses. It shows in many of his paintings but is most easily discernable in such pieces as “Afterglow,” “Reflections,” “winter Trees,” perhaps “Blue Forest.” Far Eastern influence? Maybe. Perhaps Earle just saw the same things, reacted in a similar way.
But now and then, to show, surely, that he is a colorist, is not a cautious soul, the painter uses an emotional palette, cuts loose, as in “Pink and Orange Floral,” or even more subtly, more emotionally, as in deliciously hued “Green and Purple.”
Is this artist really a man of moods, changeable? We did not ask him, even ask about him. To judge a man by his earned run average, his paintings, or whatever he does, is, we feel, the best way. An artist shows what he shows. What he might say about his work or what might be revealed about him, although it might be interesting, is unimportant, so long as he can paint. And that Eyvind Earle can do.


A chat with Eyvind Earle
‘Art?…I don’t know what it’s all about’
By April Daien

The California-based painter, Eyvind Earle, here for an exhibit of his works at the Martin Gallery, Scottsdale, had his first one-man show in France at the age of 14; a sellout exhibition in New York at 23; and, at the same age, a watercolor incorporated into the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
But he spoke humbly and thoughtfully about his work, “My style is probably best defined as designed realism,” he said, “but it’s also a combination of all the art I like most in my life. There’s much of the Oriental, the Gothic, the Persian in it, as well as the color of moderns like Van Gogh.”
“When I was 10, and for 4 years thereafter, my father, also a painter, made me paint everyday for hours,” he said. “I eventually ran away, but it was good discipline for me, and for that age. Beethoven and Mozart were forced to do this. I learned a good deal by watching my father. He was a very, very technically advanced painter who studied with Whistler and Bouguereau. Just seeing him mix the colors is something I’ve never forgotten.”
After parting from his father, Earle continued on his own.
“But by 18, I realized that academic art like my father’s was almost not to be recognized as art. By academic art I mean that which attempts only to imitate the work of a camera by recording a subject exactly, and without design or stylization.I always like and remembered a Chinese saying: ‘Never put anything down on canvas until a year after you see it – so that all you paint is the memory of it.’ I make notes when I see something I like, but I don’t copy it. If I work on location, it becomes too academic. Of course, an artist should be able to imitate with ease anything in the world which he sees and likes, to be unlimited and unhampered by technique. But I believe that art is interpretation, and that the only way to create anything really valid in an artistic sense is to let the subconscious or the super-conscious – whatever it is – inspire and guide you. If you seek only to imitate, you are seeking outside yourself, and you can never find anything.”
He lit another cigarette. “Walt Whitman has the same goal and philosophy. He was a quiet advanced human being. I would not – for one moment – compare my work in art to his poetry, but I think we’re striving for the same thing. Gerard Manley Hopkins had the same realization eventually – only not as young as Whitman.”
When questioned about his art, how he conceives it, Earle said, “At this point, having painted for so many years and so constantly, if I close my eyes, I see the finished painting before I start it. I’m seldom able to complete exactly what I see, but I put down as ably as I can what I get a glimpse of. It’s as though I see it for a second and a half, then it fades and I have just the memory. Once the image is planted, I being to paint – usually in the early morning. The more I work, the clearer this becomes. By the time I’m halfway through the painting, an idea suddenly comes to me of what to do again. But I have to work constantly and immediately. If I delay even a week, the image disappears.”
Earle, who describes himself as having “very very strong religious convictions, “but not of the sort that is very easy to define…unless you go to the East Indian Vedanta,” said that, like Hopkins and Whitman, Emerson “fits in quite well with my philosophy. Art is basically a search for the truth, and one can do this through many media: sound, color or writing – like Emerson. They all aim at the same center,” he said. “The five senses are stepping stones to realizing something – a truth – which is beyond those senses. But art isn’t only realization, it is also communication: the artist tries to communicate values and truths. Thus, it is important that we make use of the media in ways which are comprehensible to others.”
He led into a discussion of contemporary trends in art: “We’re going through a period where each artist – and there are hundreds of thousands – is trying to think of a new thing to do instead of just expressing himself. This has led to much experimentation – felt sculpture, for example. But such trails belong in an experimental art class, not a gallery. In all of history,” he continued, “only very small numbers of composers, artists, writers and poets have distinguished themselves. The same is probably true today. But most contemporary artists are just beginners; they lack discipline. They observe trends like sheep, and by the thousands. They follow instead of seeking within themselves to express what they believe.”
He cited Van Gogh as exhibiting the quality of sincerity and introspection which he values. “Van Gogh lived such an altruistic, beautiful life,” said Earle. “He wanted to help humanity and I believe that, as a result, he has probably ended up the greatest colorist the world has ever known.”
"By contrast, Picasso lacks this quality", he said.
“His technique is good, but I don’t really enjoy his work. I think his reputation is out of proportion to his contributions.”
Earle advanced other – more general- observations. “We seem to have lost contact with the reason for art. The result is pretense. We philosophize about it, read things into it, but we’re not touched by it. The great sadness is that too many artists don’t trust in the taste of all humanity. People have come to believe they must be told what to like. I prefer to rely on response,” he said. “I like to ask children which of the paintings they prefer. Their choice I know will be best. Of course, art shouldn’t be so simple that it can’t be profound. But it shouldn’t be so deep that even intelligent people can’t make sense out of it. If a painter needs to explain his work, then he has failed. It seems as though people don’t have enough self confidence. They say, ‘I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like! They shouldn’t say that; they should say, ‘My taste is as good as anyone else’s.”
He buttressed his remarks with an example from personal experience. “I don’t even know why I paint – except I like to. I don’t know what it’s all about.”

SOLVANG (VNS) – Eyvind Earle, a man who has led a most unusual life, is one of the fine artists currently being featured at the Copenhagen Gallery in Solvang’s Hamlet Square .
Earle, whose paintings are as he is, was born in this country in April of 1916, and then taken to France by his father at the age of 10. From then until he gave his first one-man exhibition at 14 in France, he was forced by his father either to paint one picture or read 50 pages of a book each day.
Following his return to Los Angeles that same year he pursued his painting career, but had no teacher from then on. At 18 he went to work for United Artists Studio as a sketch artist.
Following a year in Mexico living and painting, Earle now 21, began one of his most unusual adventures. He rode a bicycle from Los Angeles to Monroe, New York carrying 108 pounds of luggage including a tent, sleeping bag, food and watercolor materials. It took him 42 days, and during that time he painted 42 watercolors and wrote a 30,000 word diary – all on $31.
After a two-year tour of duty in the Navy in World War II, during which times he painted 210 oil portraits of the men and officers, he began designing greeting cars. His Christmas cards by 1967 were grossing $400,000 in retail sales each year.
In 1951 he went to work for Walt Disney Studios as an assistant background painter and within two years was top color stylist and background painter for the studio. Nine years after he started with Disney he began his own animation motion picture company, and in the first year did $80,000 worth of commercials and painted the trailer for Westside Story.
Now, after giving up the animation picture business he has become just what he has always wanted to be - a painter.
Earle’s collectors include Eugene Goosens, Lloyd Wright, Ray Milland, Ginger Rogers, the late Lawrence Tibbett, Gladys Swarthout, James Melton, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Von Hagen, William Carlos Williams, Mrs. James Tyson, Mr. and Mrs. David O. D. Kennedy, Ramon Navarro, Alfred Newman, Richard Day, and Mr. and Mrs. Bob Hope.

“The two little paintings I purchased from you I consider two real masterpieces.”
-Eugene Goossens

“If Eyvind Earle lives up to his youthful promise, he will be one of our American great.”
- Lawrence Tibbett


Strolling with Eldon Roark November 10, 1937

And In Walks One!
Just when I’m sitting here thinking that it has been a long time since I’ve written up a weary transcontinental traveler out to get experience and background for a book, in walks one.
He is a very husky, sandy-haired, Scandinavian-looking young man named Eyvind Earle, and on his back is a pack as large as Santa Claus’. But he isn’t a hitch-hiker, and he isn’t going to write a book.
He is a bicyclist and artist, and he is going to tell his story with a brush instead of with a pen. Right now he is specializing in water colors.
Mr. Earle is 21, and he is on his way from Hollywood to New York. He pedals about 100 miles a day, stopping for an hour occasionally to make a sketch. When he completes his journey he hopes to have a portfolio that will include a few landscapes in every state he crosses.
“I camp out,” he explains, “but I eat in.”
Mr. Earle means that he sleeps in a little tent he carries on his bike, but he buys his meals in cafes. He is not trying to sell any art along the way to pay expenses. He took care of all that before he started. He has been making his living as an artist several years, and for about a year was a sketch artist for United Artists studio.

Some Definitions
Mr. Earle goes in for “modern art” – for “creative art” instead of “photographic art.” That is, he tries to put into a painting what he feels when he looks at a landscape. As he looks across a desert, for instance, a feeling of despair or loneliness may come over him. If so, that’s what he wants to get into the picture.
But although he is a “modern artist,” he doesn’t go in for abstract stuff – those crazy modern paintings that you and I can’t make heads or tails of. He won’t go so far as to say those painters are goofs, but – “Well, it’s just as if I were to coin new words to fit my thoughts – new words that nobody understood – instead of using words that everybody can understand.”
And I thought Mr. Earle summed the situation up pretty well.
I’m no critic, but Mr. Earle’s work strikes me as good. He showed me a couple of sketches that had so much wind in them that I felt like grabbing my desk and holding on. And then he showed me some more - some that he made out in the desert country of New Mexico - that made me feel lonely the rest of the day.
It was raining when he shouldered his pack and got astride his frail English bicycle and headed east on Union Avenue – headed toward Nashville. And although he was bareheaded and didn’t have on a raincoat, he didn’t seem to mind, I suppose that was the watercolor artist in him.
Maybe it won’t be long before we’ll all be going to the art galleries to admire Eyvind Earle’s work. Maybe we’ll never hear of him again. I wonder what his fate will be.


New York World Telegram February 26, 1938
Earle’s Art Captures The Elusive
By Emily Genauer

Eyvind Earle, a 21-yeard-old youngster with a yen for adventure and for paint, traveled more than 3,000 miles across the continent on his bicycle to see America , and get from the seeing material for enough pictures to comprise a one-man exhibition.
He was successful on both counts. His exhibition opened last week at the Morgan Gallery, but if you expect to find in it travel notes on America , you’ll be disappointed. No gas stations or hot-dog stands here, no Grand Canyon, no painted deserts, nor any of the “attractions” the tourist pamphlets tell you about.
I suppose, really, that they might have been painted anywhere at all. But only one so affected by nature as Mr. Earle was as a result of his trip could possibly have done them this way. Instead of depicting the obvious, he has captured with his brush the quality of the air after a rain in the desert, of moonlight on a still night in the mountains of winter winds sweeping across unbroken fields, of trees clothed by autumn in savage garb. There is poetry in them and imagination, and extraordinary delicacy of tone and brush. In none are there any recognizable aspects of distinct locale. Any imaginative craftsman with the brush and even a good photographer could have achieved that. It takes a highly sensitive and skilled artist to do what this youth has done.


Time Magazine March 7, 1938
ART: Water-Colorists

Last October, a blond boy on a bicycle left Hollywood, pumping hard, and headed east for Flagstaff, AZ. Just as the sun rose on the day after Thanksgiving, he dropped his bicycle on his grandmother’s frosty lawn in Monroe, NY, curled up in a sleeping bag and went to sleep. He felt good, not only because he had covered 3,268 miles on $31 and had averaged 78 strenuous miles a day, but because on his way he had painted about 40 water colors. Last week 25 of them, exhibited at the Manhattan galleries of Charles L. Morgan, made the beginning of a reputation for 21-year-old Eyvind Earle.
Art runs in the Earle family, Eyvind’s father, Ferdinand Pinney Earle, is noted not only for five successive marriages and a generally Byronic character but for his writing. He recoined the delicate noun “affinity” into its special sense of “soul mate.” A stage designer, he made the Star of Bethlehem and Valley of the Lepers sets in Ben Hur. “Affinity” Earle now lives in France . Eyvind’s uncle on this mother’s side is slight, dark Dr. William Carlos Williams, the realist poet of Rutherford , NJ.
What Artist Earle crossed in the U.S. to see was not city life but countryside. Result: a sheaf of landscapes remarkable for their suggestion of distances, land masses and weather moods, a soft poem of U.S. mountains as Pare Lorentz’ documentary movie, The River (Time, Nov.8), is a hard poem of U.S. rivers. In Desert Near Santa Fe he caught with a series of fine washes, quickly dried with the brush, the 90-mile, lucent light of the Southwest; in Color Splendor he framed the broad Shenandoah Valley . Critics who doubt the permanency of soft poems noted that in at least one painting, Savage Trees, he swirled a brush full of rich color in a freer, more furious style.


The Art News April 22, 1939
Two Generations and Two Styles: Earle’s in a Father & Son Show

A contrast in styles so sharp that it is difficult to explain characterizes the two groups of paintings by Ferdinand Earle and his son Eyvind at the Morgan Gallery. All the difference between a tight, almost painfully realistic way of painting and the highly sensitive perception of atmospheric mood in terms of fluid wash lies between these two painters, and it is hard to realize that one has been the teacher of the other.
Watercolors which convey the soft mist on hillsides no less romantically than the smoke which puffs from a locomotive are the work of Eyvind Earle. He has given to railroad stations and tracks an interpretation so poetic that ALONG THE FRIE RAILROAD will remain in this reviewers mind as a TOUR DE FORCE in seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. RAIN CLOUDS, THE SNOW FALL, RAMAPO HILLS—such subjects offer him material for his delicate perception and highly skillful technique and they are no less delightful. Beside them his father’s matter of fact view and indifferent color leaves nothing and suggests little to the imagination of the spectator. One does, however, hail him as a teacher who allows his pupil to develop his own means of expression, superimposing nothing either in style or approach.


New York Journal and American April 23, 1939

Eyvind Earle’s watercolors have a wide range of expression, brilliant decorative pieces such as “Flower Splash”, the delicate nuances of color in “Cloud Light”, the thrust of “Old Brooklyn Bridge”, across the moving light and shadow of the river’s surface.
Boldness and vigor are no more discernible in this work than sensibility and fine adjustment of light and color planes. Yet most of all one is impressed with the fact that the artist had both observed his subject carefully and nicely apprehended its essential character--- of his sound craftsmanship there can be no question.


New York Herald Tribune April 23, 1939

Eyvind Earle’s watercolors include studies of New York harbor and rural landscapes, which are stronger, more emphatic in design than his earlier works. “Ice Floes” and “Cloud Light” are poetic and skillful interpretations of the atmosphere of the waterfront.


New York Times April 7, 1940
By Howard Devree

At least a third of the more than a score of watercolors by Eyvind Earle, in his second show at the Charles Morgan Gallery, are shed of any of his earlier work. Sounder construction, more definite statement and more detailed working out of his compositions are evident. A kitchen interior, snowy landscapes and two strong figure pieces stand out.


Los Angeles Times May 25, 1941
By Arthur Miller

Eyvind Earle, a young man in the enviable flush of prolific creation, has a large exhibit of recent watercolors at the Raymond and Raymond Galleries It is a refreshing affair.
Earle’s subjects run a wide range. He paints stark farms in strong reds and blues, or mirage-pale mountains in delicate tints of silvery gray, and they have equal authority on the wall. He draws an old woman or a child in firm lines and contrasting tones and then does an idyllic “musical” bit of misty leafless trees in tenderly poetic mood.
Streets, interiors of rooms, falling snow, blossoms, the stride East River , or a Sierra, he responds to and paints them all. And his style and colors seem to grow out of each subject. In tender or blaring tones he washes in a picture that would, in almost all cases, refresh any wall.


Watercolors at Morgan Gallery, New York
By Emily Genauer

Most of his papers have an almost Japanese delicacy, at atmospheric quality that wonderfully suggests fog and fine rains. But utterly unlike these is another group, with a cold sparkle, a flame-like color and a brick and staccato decorative patterning that suggests a little the early watercolors of Burchfield.


Jax Air News, 1944

Huge Picture Portrays Life in Boot Camp
A striking mural, depicting all the phases of “boot” training, this week hangs in the reception room of the Recruit Training Center Administration building at NATTC.
Last Saturday, during the weekly review at the Recruit Center , the mural was presented to Capt. J. B. Lynch, Commanding Officer, NATTC, by Lt. Cmdr. J.L. Rhodes, Jr., Officer-in-Charge of the boot camp. In behalf of Eyvind A. Earle, PhM3c, who executed the picture.
Earle worked on the painting during his liberty hours for about three and half months, and only recently completed it. Reds, blues, whites, and natural skin colors were used to portray the life of a “boot.” Every phase of this training is included in the picture which is four feet high and eight feet long.
At the conclusion of the presentation Saturday, Captain Lynch asked that the painting be hung in the Recruit Center Administration building. The recruit-training program here recently was placed under the jurisdiction of NATTC.
Since his induction to the Navy 10 months ago, Earle has produced more than 100 individual portraits, in addition to the mural. These have been done in watercolors, oils, and black and whites.
Although doing his stint now as a pharmacist’s mate, at war’s end he plans to turn again on a full time basis- to brushes and pallet. So far, his work has been divided almost equally between the field of fine arts and commercial art, but he hopes to turn his back on so-called commercial life when he returns to civilian life.
The young artist studied for four years in Europe, and a year and a half in Mexico . One of his works, a landscape in watercolors, hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.


Stouffer News January, 1953
Artist Designs Fourth Stouffer Menu

Artists like Eyvind Earle are born, not made. The designer of three Stouffer’s popular menu covers has earned his bread and butter by painting since his high-school days 18 years ago, yet he never studied art until 1950!
Mr. Earle’s biography reads like a Halliburton adventure tale. American-born, he spent four years in a French boarding school, left high school in Hollywood to be a sketch artist at United Artists. After a year there, the wanderlust called, and he went off to Mexico to paint for a year. When he grew tired to that, he pedaled a bicycle across the country to his native New York City , painting 47 watercolors on the way!
By the time he was 23, Mr. Earle had sold a painting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art - no mean feat - and was running his own Christmas card Company.
In the Navy during the war, he whiled away spare moments by painting oil portraits of his shipmates; he charged $5 apiece, turned out over 200 of them during his two-year stay. Since 1948, when he joined the American Artists Group (which reproduces works of contemporary artists), he has lived in California, where his art experience has ranged from architectural drafting to his present work as a layout and background man for the Walk Disney Studios.
In addition to the prizes he has won, Eyvind Earle has been honored by more than 30 one-man shows in cities all over the United States. In 1950, this artist decided it was time to study art, so he spent six months at the Art Center School in Los Angeles .
There is a Mrs. Earle, and a Miss Kristin Earle, age six, who occupy some of his time when he’s not at Disney’s. In addition, he continues to do free-lance art work, including his beautiful Christmas cards, which you may have seen in your local stores.
NEW WINTER SCENE
And he finds time to create original designs for menus to grace Stouffer’s tables. In addition to the Holiday Holly cover, we recently bought from him a new winter scene, which will appear for the first time next year. It has typical Earle qualities: fresh, cold perspective on a well-known theme, gently “stylized” or simplified; and meticulous detail contrasted with large plain surfaces. The color treatment is daring - a single spot of vivid red (the barn) perfectly balanced against the blue-greens, white and darker tones. We’re sure it will be as popular as his others.


Los Angeles Examiner December 23, 1956
Geometrics Liven Earle Works
Casein Exhibition in Two Styles
By Jack Massard

When so much of art has gone fuzzy these days, an exhibition like the one at Esther Robles Gallery is a refreshant. The gallery has 38 casein paintings by Eyvind Earle of Northridge.
Mr. Earle is an art director for the Walt Disney studios, is in his early 40s, has done considerable illustrating, and this is his first major exhibition in 10 years.
His show at the Robles Gallery falls into two styles, one prettily decorative and the other of crisp, clear, imaginative statements, which, to my eyes, were more like-able.
The artist’s decorative pictures are fascination things, however. The manner in which he floods his masonite surfaces with multi-colors and yet maintains orderliness is a sure indication of his refined craftsmanship.

LIKE JAPANESE
These pictures are mostly floral and foliage, sometimes reminding of the later Japanese style, but characteristically done with more verve and a kind of brittle delicacy.
Mr. Earle’s masonite surfaces and casein paints lend themselves better in my opinion, to his other approach, which is an adroit inter-play of geometrics. This may read like a cold proposition, indeed, but seldom is, under the artist’s warm use of colors.
He has in this show attempted many subjects and I think his four pictures of barns are the best examples of how nondescript subjects can be presented in absorbing ways, without resorting to strident emotionalism or shock-compelling techniques.

REFLECTIVE
In fact, Mr. Earle is seldom emotional at all. He is reflective, introspective. He deals in simple broad statements as parallelly forthright as his neat precise designs. Good examples of this approach are his barn pictures, a lonely thing called “Tracks,” “Umbrellas” and “Masts and Sails.”
Mr. Earle’s pictures will be at the gallery (665 North La Cienga Boulevard) through January 11.


RADIO-TELEVISION
Television Reviews, 1961
(Doyle Dane & Bernbach)

The Story of Christmas
With Tennessee Ernie Ford, Roger Wagner Chorale & Orch
Producer-Director: William N. Burch
Writer: Charles Tazewell
60 Minutes, Sun. 10 p.m.
GENERAL MILLS
NBC-TV (color)

The big problem that Christmas presents to programmers is finding a new way to tell the same old story. NBC-TV’s special, “The Story of Christmas” found it with an animated art version on the story of the Nativity excellently etched by Eyvind Earle. It backed up the narration of the story according to the Gospel of St. Luke with effective artwork done with reverent sketches that glued attention to the home screen. The segment ran a little over 18 minutes, but it made the show.


TV GUIDE December 21, 1961

The Nativity
A truly unusual setting is developed for the story of Christmas on an Ernie Ford Special.

The scenes on these pages-a shepherd kneeling before the Star, the journey of the Wise Men, the entry of Mary and Joseph into Bethlehem-are only three of more than 26,000 paintings made by artist Eyvind Earle for an “animated” Nativity sequence that will be seen tomorrow night (Dec. 22, NBC) as part of Ernie Ford’s holiday special “The Story of Christmas.” The story, taken from St. Luke’s account of the birth of Christ, is narrated by Ford with a background of carols sung by the Roger Wagner Chorale. Although the sequence is only 18 minutes long, its dramatic visual effects represent nine months of full time work- and experimentation. The project was a labor of love for Earle, a former Walt Disney animator, who did all the paintings himself, then photographed them. Each frame of the sequence is a multiple exposure-a number of paintings are combined and transferred to film in such a manner as to produce the effects of movement and color at many levels and distances.


Santa Barbara News-Press March 23rd, 1969
Valleys News
Easter Story Painted for TV Program by Solvang Artist

SOLVANG (VNS) - The product of a full year of exhausting work by Solvang painter Eyvind Earle will be shown on Channel 5 television April 4 at 7:30 p.m. and again on April 6 at 4:30 p.m.
Entitled “Where Were You on That Easter Long Ago,” the production, according to Earle, is intended as a visual tone poem ballet rather than a realistic portrayal of an event. Mood, he says, becomes more important than realism.
Earle, who is now devoting his full time to painting, worked a full year painting hundreds of backgrounds, overlays and cells, close-ups of Jesus Christ, the disciples, the soldiers, Pontius Pilate and Judas along with more hundreds of multitudes

FACE OF JESUS
He found that he had to paint dozens of pictures of the face of Christ before he was fully satisfied with the result.
Earle’s first try at such a production came in 1963 when he designed a storyboard of a Christmas special for television of the nativity.
Singer Ernie Ford became interested and with the Roger Wagner Chorale it resulted in a one hour special with an 18-minutes segment on the nativity created by Earle.
The Easter film employs many innovations and inventions unused before. Every scene is done on a multiplane camera stand with up to four levels, each separately lit with spotlights to obtain the desired effect and mood.

LIGHTING IS KEY
Moving figures pass though a ray of light from black silhouette to being brilliantly lit, and then fading back to dark. He also used a bi-pack on his camera using a black and white traveling matte for the moving figures and then shooting the backgrounds on four separate exposures moving at four different speeds to give a tremendous feeling of depth.
In some scenes, the figures remain sharp as the background of clouds and light changes from sharp to totally diffused images that change color at the same time.
Unlike standard animation, much more time is spent lighting the scene than in shooting it.
Mel Henke works with Earle on the film supplying the sound track, and both Earle and Menke agreed that rather than narrate the story of Easter, it would be better to use the Sermon on the Mount and all the other great sayings in counterpoint to the visual.
Paul Frees was chosen to narrate Bill Luce sings the spiritual “Were You There?” and Bill Newman plays the guitar.
This production is Earle’s last motion picture work. In 1968 he decided to devote the rest of his busy life to painting. This year he has already won two top awards in national competitions in addition to one-man shows in Scottsdale , Ariz. , Solvang, Los Angeles and San Francisco.


Santa Ynez Valley News April 3, 1969
Valley Painting Wins First Place

Eyvind Earle, Valley artist, won a first prize gold medal in oil painting for his “Santa Ynez Valley” in San Diego’s “The Story of California in Art,” a celebration of San Diego’s 200th anniversary. Judges included Millard Sheets of Scripps College, Joe Mugnaini of Otis Art Institute, Norman Kent, editor of American Artist magazine, and Everett Gee Jackson of San Diego. The award also included $1,000.


Art Winners Announced In ‘Story of California ’
By Naomi Baker

Eyvind Earle of Buellton won $1,000 and a gold 200th anniversary medal as first prize in oil in the national exhibition, “The Story of California in Art.”
The exhibition, which drew entries from New York , Florida and elsewhere in the nation, will open publicly tomorrow in Old Town Galleries, 2501 San Diego Ave.
The show is cosponsored by the galleries and 200th Anniversary, Inc.
Earle’s painting is titled “Santa Ynez Valley.” It depicts Northern California hills in autumn.
Larry Rink, Laguna Beach, won first award in watercolors-$1,000 and gold anniversary medal, for “Winterscape, Lake Arrowhead .”
Second Prize in the oil section, $500 and a silver anniversary medal, went to Herb Griswold of Laguna Beach for “Low Tide, Laguna.”
Robert Rishell of Oakland won third prize in oil for “Rural Free Delivery.”
Jesse Corsaut of Pacific Grove won first honorable mention for an oil, “Goodbye to Hard Times.”
“Boat-docks, San Pedro” by Helmuth Wegner of Los Angeles , won second honorable mention for oils.
Ray Friesz, Laguna Beach, won third honorable mention for an oil, “Live Oak Forest.”
Other winners included watercolor, second, Don King-man, New York City, $500 and silver medal, for “Golden Gate Bridge;” third, Marie M. Roberts, Walnut Creek, for “December Orchards;” first honorable mention, Morris Shubin, Montelbello, “El Ranchito;” second honorable mention, Bela Kasza, Northridge, “Bay Area;” third honorable mention, Eileen M. Whitaker, “California Night Lights;” fourth honorable mention, George Gibson, Los Angeles, “From the Rise of the Hill.”
Graphics: first prize, $300 and gold medal, Roi Partridge, Oakland, for etching, “Weather Station at Donner Pass;” second, Joan Maher, “Sierra Storm;” first honorable mention, Al Napoletano of Novato, “Vallejo’s Vaqueros;” second honorable mention, Kathryn Trower, Laguna Beach, “Another Day, San Diego Zoo.”
On the jury of selections and awards were Norman Kent, editor of American Artist magazine; Millard Sheets, Claremont; Joseph Mugnaini, Los Angeles, and Everett Gee Jackson.
They selected 200 exhibits from 374 entries. Among the entrants were 48 members of the American Water Color Society and 36 members of the National Academy of Design.


The Arizonian May 15, 1969
Gallery Hopping
By Pamela Stevenson

Pirating phrases from literature is the easiest way to describe Eyvind Earle’s show winding up this weekend at the Martin Gallery . His gentle watercolors are pastel poems; his skillful oils are canvas essays.
Earle is a master of composition and he makes the canvas seem enormous. Many of his paintings are strongly vertical with bold black trees and slender stalks reaching up into infinity.
Some of Earle’s works are starkly technical. “Farmyard Linear II: has the clear cut simplicity of an architect’s diagram. Hilly landscapes—hazed or stark—are wonderfully bold and proportioned.
But they are only half of Earle and before the viewer can peg him, Earle presents his softer side in calm and chaotic colors. The stylistic, stick oils are full of shadows and planes, eerily futuristic; but in his color paintings Earle evokes a cheery feeling.
“Green and Purple” is a clump of watercolor blotches creating a free form bouquet. Fantasy creeps into his watercolors and it would be no great surprise to see Tinker bell tiptoeing across the tissue paper whites and blues of “Blue Iris.”
It is unusual to find an artist with the technical skill to satisfy architects and the imagination and color-courage to delight children. Perhaps Earle was schooled in fantasy painting during his seven years with Walt Disney.


Santa Barbara News -Press: Valley News March 28, 1971
Eyvind Earle: His Paint Brush Captures and Preserves Images of S.Y. Valley
By Bill Griggs

SOLVANG – A one time Walt Disney Studios color consultant and background artist is gaining ever-increasing popularity not only for the hills and backwoods of Santa Ynez Valley, which provide the source for nearly all subjects.
It is generally conceded, not only in the world of arts and artists, but also in the scope of this geographical area, that Eyvind Earle has done more than anyone else to capture, then preserve the varied and boundless images of the Santa Ynez Valley.
Individualism
Earle has done as much, intentional or not, as any public relations firm, celebration, park, parade or architecture, to attract people to this area and to spread the names of the valley and its small communities in ever widening circles across the nation.
What writers have done with paper and pen, Earle has with brush and canvas. His works have hung in galleries, corporate offices and private homes all over the country, and those that have seen them have searched out the artist to admire his latest efforts.
Their journeys have brought them then, to the Santa Ynez Valley. His close friend, and owner of the Copenhagen Gallery, where Earle’s paintings are now making their constant debuts, Cliff Aronson, has said:
“Eyvind’s greatest asset is that he is an individual. When you see an Earle painting, you know immediately it is his. He is a master of his trade, and he is not in any way affected by time. His works could have been painted 400 years ago, or 400 years from now.”
Visitors to the area and to Aronson’s Gallery have commented time and again that they have “seen the Santa Ynez Valley much differently now, through Earle’s eyes, the real beauty of the valley,” and that this is truly Earle country.”
Earle’s originality, his refusal to accept the mundane, must have been given birth through the harsh discipline of his father. Born an American citizen in 1916, Eyvind was taken to France by his father, a professional painter, at the age of 10.
For the next four years, until he gave his first one-man exhibition in France at the age of 14, he was forced by his father to either paint one picture or read 50 pages of a book a day.
Years later, at 21, he pedaled a bicycle from California to New York in 42 days, painting 42 watercolors and writing a 30,000 word diary along the way.


San Francisco Show
That type of discipline has resulted in Earle’s becoming the most in demand artist on the West Coast today, both on the part of the public and by galleries screaming for his pictures.
His most recent show at the Copenhagen Gallery sold 52 of 57 paintings, a tribute to Earle the artist. Aronson reports that the demand is so great for his works that many pictures are sold sight unseen over the telephone (seven to a doctor in Cincinnati ).
“We have just finished a one man show in San Francisco ,” Aronson reports, “and we have another scheduled for Carmel in April. We have had offers from many major galleries along the East Coast, New York City , Philadelphia and Palm Beach .”
An indication of Earle’s fast growing popularity and demand is the skyrocketing of the prices of his works. Two years ago, for example, a 12 by 16 inch painting sold for $200, now it would go for $1,250. Similarly, a 30 by 40 inch work which sold then for $800 will now be on the market for $4,000.
“I am convinced,” Aronson said sincerely, “that someday his paintings will be priceless.”


Evening Tribune December 24, 1971
San Diego , CA
Art Arena: Artist Earle paints wintry yule cheer
By Jan Jennings

Christmas Eve and thoughts turn to what may be called Christmas art and the Christmas artist.
Represented are works by Eyvind Earle, 55, noted painter and Christmas card designer. No stranger to a San Diego audience, one of Earle’s paintings won first prize in the 200th anniversary painting competition and several of his works are on display at Old Town Galleries, as are samples of his Christmas cards.
Earle works primarily in oil on canvas mounted on board. His is a soft touch, with rolling hills and sand almost Rousseau-like a frequent subject for his works. His scenes suggest a quiet serenity as he combines detail of design with simplicity of theme.
Earle has been designing Christmas cards in the same style as his paintings since World War II, yet his background in art goes far back to his youth.
His was an artistic family. His father was a set designer, writer, poet and publisher. He studied under Whistler, and Bouguereau. He was art director of the original “Ben Hur” film in Hollywood . Earle’s mother was a concert pianist.
When his parents were separated, young Eyvind went with his father to Mexico City, then for several years in his teen’s toured Europe with him. His first exhibit was at the age of 14 in Paris .
Discipline was strict for the young traveler as his father insisted that he either do a painting a day or read 50 pages - perhaps explanatory of his prolific painting thereafter.
Earle never finished high school. He just wanted to paint. He served two years in the Navy in World War II, then began designing Christmas cards.
In addition to Christmas card design, Earle has had innumerable exhibitions. His first major art sale came at the age of 23 when he sold a painting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City after his third exhibit there.
Over the years Earle has worked as color consultant and background designer for Disney Enterprises and has run his own animated motion picture company where he produced television commercials as well as award winning shows.
In 1968 he settled in the Santa Ynez valley to devote his time strictly to painting.
After the death of his wife last year, Earle moved with his mother and daughter to Canada where he continues to paint.
He is represented by the Copenhagen Gallery in Solvang, CA. Currently he is working in his home in Winnipeg for a 1972 exhibition to be held at the gallery.


Valley News August 28, 1977
Earle’s works on display at S.Y.V gallery
LOS OLIVOS – Santa Ynez Valley artist Eyvind Earle has joined the roster of artists exhibiting at the John Cody Gallery here.
Earle, a veteran or more than 40 one-man shows across the country, is a recipient of the $1,000 gold medal grand award in “The Story of California” exhibit in San Diego.
A native of New York City, Earle began painting at 10, went on a four-year tour of Europe with his artist father and had three exhibits in New York by the age of 23.
His only current West Coast places of exhibition of his original works are Carmel, San Francisco and the Cody Gallery here.


Scene November 1979
Art – The Investment of Today
Eyvind Earle – Investment of Tomorrow?

Eyvind Earle, by contrast, has developed a stylistic, surrealistic form of Oriental-inspired paintings and serigraphs. Like Kunstler, he was also inspired by his artist father, Ferdinand Earle. In fact, the only training Eyvind had was sitting at his father’s easel and observing.
Like many successful painters, Eyvind started out in the commercial field of art. An important part of his training started in 1951 when he joined the Walt Disney Studios as the assistant background painter. Within a few years, he was promoted to color stylist, and eventually formed his own animation and motion picture company. In time, however, he went back to his first love; painting.
His early works were strictly realistic, but after being influenced by painters such as Rockwell Kent, Georgia O’Keefe and Van Gogh, he developed his own unique style. Today, his perception of landscapes is truly an original one. They are, at once, mysterious, disciplined and moody. Eyvind’s ability is unusual in that he captures the American countryside in a lyrical, decorative style and yet the viewer can see exactly what is on the paper No one has to ask, “What is that?”
Eyvind Earle’s oil paintings will be on display at New York ’s Hammer Galleries Tuesday, November 20th, barely on the heels of Mort Kunstler’s exhibit which ended there last week.
Earle is married to Kennedy daughter Joan, and this is his first one-man show at Hammer Galleries. Although Mr. Earle has had many one-man shows, being represented by this prestigious gallery is quite a feather in his cap. Through those portals, they say, never has passed an unsuccessful artist.


The New Mexican Santa Fe , N.M. September 23, 1984
The long road of Eyvind Earle
By Lucretia Maytag

Eyvind Earle shies away from a discussion of talent.
For him, the issue is discipline. At the age of 10, when he was kidnapped by his artist father to southern France , he was told that he either had to paint a picture a day or read a book. He has been painting ever since.
At an early age, he exhibited the independence and survival instinct which pushed him on throughout his life. At 14, finding life with his stern father and his father’s fifth wife unbearable, he ran away. With the grocery money his father had given him, he bought a ticket and hopped on a train with his bike.
Once in Paris , he rode throughout the city until he found the address of a stepbrother. While attempts were made to notify the authorities that Eyvind legally belonged with his mother, Eyvind hid from police on an island in the Seine, accessible only by rowboat.
When he was finally reunited with his mother in Hollywood , the first words he said to his mother were, “Do I have to paint anymore?” She said no, but he found that everyone was very impressed by his superior skill after the years of discipline. He continued.
He quit high school early because United Artists offered him a job upon graduation. What was the point in continuing when he already knew what he would be doing. At that time, the $20 a week he received was a fortune.
Though he received a scholarship to the Arts Center in Los Angeles, a well-known sculptor said it would ruin him and take away the style he was developing on his own. Instead, a wealthy benefactress gave him $25 a month to go live and paint in Mexico. He was nineteen.
When he returned to Hollywood, Eyvind rode his bike everyday seeking out new scenery to paint. It dawned on him that he would always have new scenery if he continued in one direction instead of retracing his route to come back home. On Oct. 11, in 1937, with 108 pounds of luggage and $21, he set out on his bike across the United States .
He carried a letter to people in Santa Fe who, it was promised, would give him a free meal. When Eyvind hit Albuquerque he rode the extra 65 miles north to Santa Fe only to find that the people weren’t home. But at that point, he fell in love with Santa Fe , holding its image in his mind until he moved here late in 1983.
Continuing the discipline on his ride, he painted one painting each day. He never ate in a restaurant because it was too expensive. To get going in the morning he built a little fire, boiled oatmeal and ate it with a lot of sugar. Throughout the day, he consumed 4 quarts of milk (at 10 cents a quart), and two loaves of bread. At night he had oatmeal or rice.
When he arrived in New York 42 days later with 42 watercolors, the same benefactress who sponsored his trip to Mexico took him to Bloomingdale’s, where, for $25 dollars apiece, he got two suits.
Properly dressed, he made the rounds to galleries and found one the first day that wanted to have a show right away. His bicycle ride made wonderful publicity and everything was sold for prices Eyvind humbly set too low. The money didn’t last long.
The years that followed were filled with financial difficulty. His mother moved to New York and peddling their various talents, they scraped by. On weekends, they went to Long Island where they entertained a wealthy family.
His mother was a concert pianist and piano teacher; Eyvind could play the guitar and sing folk-songs. Later he worked on a yacht where he spent his free time designing Christmas cards. Eventually that became a business and connection with the American Artists Group which has printed 600 of Eyvind’s designs and sold over 200 million cards.

When he was drafted into the Navy, he found good fortune. For the first time in his life, he was not preoccupied with how he would manage day-to-day expenses.
During night duty in the hospital, he painted portraits. ($5 for enlisted men; $20 for officers) He became so proficient and popular that he had a waiting list, and by the time his duty was over he had painted 210 portraits.
After the war, he married and created Christmas cards, among other things, until he was hired by the Disney studios in 1951. He quickly rose into a top job there, and was art director for Sleeping Beauty. One of his shorts “Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Bloom,” won an Academy Award.
“It was the art training of my life,” Eyvind said. “There were 500 artists to learn from and you couldn’t be limited in what you did because you’d be asked to draw everything under the sun.”
For better pay, he moved to another studio, and later formed his own animation company, doing ads for Chevrolet, Ham’s Beer, Marlboro, Kellogg and others.
With Tennessee Ernie Ford, he created an animated feature called “The Christmas Story” which is still shown on television. This led to an Easter show which Eyvind thought would be his big chance. At the last moment it was canceled by the network because of the subject of crucifixion was termed anti-Semitic. With that blow, Eyvind gave up the idea of big fortune in the movies.
In the non-commercial art world, he felt that the “whole direction seemed crazy.” He hadn’t had a show in years, but by painting as he wished, not in the style that was being touted in the art world, one success followed another. With his habit of painting, he always had plenty of paintings for galleries to take. And he still does. While one painting dries, he begins another. He doesn’t like to waste time.
In his house south of Santa Fe , he has built a dream studio. The walkway into his work area is a 60-by-6 foot hallway, high-ceilinged skylights, where he can hang his paintings to dry and go back to over and over again, and adding meticulous detail.
He doesn’t work specific hours, “only when I’m free,” he said. But last winter, this meant fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, culminating in 60 paintings.

Being in the Southwest has nothing to do with his painting – it is just where he wants to live. He doesn’t work from the landscape anymore, but from his mind. For his entire life, since he was quite young, a metaphysical approach to life has dominated his thinking, and like many artists, he feels as if he is merely the vehicle for expression, that the brush often moves without his conscious intervention. Therefore, it makes no sense that he should ever run out of ideas, and so far he hasn’t. “I make no effort to be anything except what comes out automatically.”
Eyvind still prefers not to be connected with any particular style. If pressed, he will call his work “designed realism.” Among his influences he lists Georgia O’Keefe; Rockwell Kent; and Japanese, Persian and Gothic painting.
His paintings begin on masonite boards with oils or acrylics. The colors are bright, at times almost fluorescent as in his recent desert landscapes of monolithic cliffs. His California landscapes glow with the unearthly light. The lightness of effect may look like airbrush but everything is done by hand. Tiny dots of color fill the branches of trees with the sense of movement and light. In many of the landscapes the perspective seems to be from above.
At 68, there is no waning of his energy, if anything, with his new studio, it looks like the beginning of an even more prolific cycle. Everything he needs is there, in order. “There are no accidents, no chance, everything is at is should be,” Eyvind believes.


The Santa Fe Reporter April 16, 1986
A Maligned Masterpiece
By Casey St. Charnez

“Sleeping Beauty” the most unfairly maligned of the 25 Disney cartoon features, returns to screen (the Movies, G) to remind us that critics and audiences at the time of the movie’s original release may have both been wrong. For indeed this 77-minute work, in production for nine years, is an elegant, eloquent expression of the art of the Disney animator at its highest.
As the first 70 mm cartoon to come out of the studio, it employed 300 artists who produced a million drawings, each one twice as wide as for previous 35 mm animated endeavors, like “Bambi” and “Peter Pan.” The costly new horizontal multi plane camera was invented especially for the production. Stereo design specialists and marketing analysts alike worked overtime. The labor overhead was staggering.
Intended as a prestigious reserved-sear road show event, it became a money-be-damned enterprise. The budget tripled to an astounding (for 1959) $6 million, a vast sum that Walt Disney was nonetheless sure he would see returned tenfold. But the picture’s release recovered barely two-thirds of its cost. It was a failure.
For this was an era of more sophisticated films and film-goers, when franker material, like “Anatomy of a Murder” and “Some Like it Hot,” made Disney seem out of step. Moreover, the escalating Cold War spawned a population concerned more with space conquest than with flimsy cartoon fluff. Even before the fairy tale opened, then, there was an air of apathy surrounding it.
But things got worse when it premiered. Reviewers trounced its stylized look and called it “oppressive,” laying the blame entirely on Walt’s shoulders-erroneously surmising he was much too interested in his brand new Disneyland . Nor were there very many ticket-buyers for the feature, despite the grandeur of its presentation, the lilt of its score and an unprecedented merchandising campaign.
Apparently the television audience that Disney had wooed and won over the previous five years with “Walt Disney Presents” on ABC-TV preferred to stay home. His great dream of perfecting and presenting state-of-the-art animation became, instead, a write-off.
Admittedly some of the original objections remain valid. The way the Disney adaptors truncated the well-known story diluted the dreamy time-stands-still atmosphere that came from Aurora ’s traditional hundred-year’ sleep. This liberty with narrative is still somewhat unsettling, to be sure, as is the lyricized soundtrack, freely adapted to popular taste, of Tchaikovsky’s 1890 ballet score.
Further more, there are numerous crowd scenes where only the foreground characters move-a concession, no doubt, to union wages- and I personally find the five minutes where the two kings sing “The Skumps” to be a great time for a second popcorn.
But today there is a defense against all of yesterday’s accusations. The storyline’s divergences now seem understandable, given the available screen time and the changing attention span of a modern movie audience. In fact, the variances often improved the familiar plot. For instance, condensing seven fairies to three works very well (Instead of crowding the scene with too many characters, having these three- Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather- become forest peasant women to raise the princess incognito allows much more character interplay and humor.) This approach is actually superior to the original Russian tale, which uses the fairies ex machina, or to Charles Perrault’s 17th-century French version, and Marius Petipa’s Imperial Russian Ballet adaptation.
Too, one can champion Disney’s climatic battle as good Prince Phillip duels to the death with the evil fairy Maleficent (a much better name for this villainess, incidentally, than the previous incarnations, Henbane and Carabosse). In the ballet, there is no fight, merely defeat. In Perrault’s version-and in Shelley Duvall’s 1983 “Faerie Tale Theatre” version, -the evil fairy becomes an ogress. But in Disney she metamorphoses into a dragon of heart stopping ferocity, armed, as she growls, with “all the powers of Hell”-surely the first time this daring word had ever been used in a Disney film!
One can even argue with the artists themselves, who have ranted against their own work. Animation directors Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston have loudly lamented their “incredibly boring” job of bringing the Prince to life. On the contrary, the figure of the Prince has much more to do than similar characters in “Snow White” and “Cinderella.” Phillip had more dialogue, more punch lines, and more sheer strength and vitality than his counterparts, however charming they be.
Ultimately, though, it is the beauty of “Sleeping Beauty” itself that seems to have been most blindly ignored in its own time. The film is gorgeous, like moving stained glass.
Based on early Renaissance paintings, the film’s images have a rich, florid, French texture. While stylization is evident throughout-as in squaring-of tree corners and angulating bodies-the intent was to update “old-fashioned” animation techniques. Nowhere in Disney can you find more extravagant lighting and shadowing or more breath-catching illusion of life.
I’ve seen this picture twice in the last week-perhaps 10 times since 1959-and still I am struck by the mastery of line, the wealth of hue and most of all the appearance of actual, not illustrated, movement.
“Snow White” set a standard and changed forever how audiences saw cartoons. “Cinderella” is the screen’s definitive treatment of a fairy tale. “Dumbo” may be more affecting, “Pinocchio” more arresting. And “Fantasia” is without doubt the most precedential and lasting achievement of the Disney Studios. But if you leave the Movies without humming the “Sleeping Beauty Waltz” to yourself, then you’ve got a heart of stone and an eye of glass.