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Indelible
Impressions
A designer, painter and illustrator, Eyvind Earle was
hand-picked by Walt Disney in the 1950s to create
the backgrounds for Sleeping Beauty.
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ART
It is unusual to take style direction from a background
painter. But in order to make the mood and magic and fantasy
and elegance come to life on the screen, one needs to create a
marriage 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, Eyvind
redesigned her. She became very angular, moving with more
fluidity and elegance, but her design had a harder line. The
edges of her dress became squarer, pointed even, and the back
of her head came almost to a point rather than round and cuddly like the other Disney girls. It had to be done to complement
the 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 been
painted. But they did. Each looked over Earle’s shoulder and
learned to paint in the signature high-contrast, clean lines and
uncluttered 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
W
ere you to sit in on a discussion among the retired
animators of Disney, you would hear very little
about the backgrounds. As the word implies, they
retreat not only from the action of the scene but
also from conversation, replaced by a celebration of character
which, 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 and
prepare the viewer for the mood and the moment when the
action will begin.
“Some of the most beautiful establishing shots,” said Disney
animator Ron Dias, “are in Snow White, where you see the
castle, the grounds, the sky, the clouds, all setting you up for
what will come. Finally, you get inside the castle to find the
magic mirror on the wall, and you understand that this is where
the queen lives.”
The other exception would be the artistry of the late Eyvind
Earle, who became a background painter for Walt Disney
Studios in 1951. Although he worked on such noted films as
For Whom the Bulls Toil, Melody, Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom,
Paul Bunyan and Lady and the Tramp, perhaps his most legendary contribution to Disney animation was his revolutionary
background 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. “Walt
chose him specifically. The beginning of Disney was very
European, what I call a moving tapestry. Walt wanted it to have
a very Renaissance Flemish, Germanic look, and Eyvind’s
unique style really fit the bill. But the characters had already
been designed, and they didn’t work with such a stylized background at all. Sleeping Beauty was the only film I know of that
went back to the drawing board, literally. Because of Eyvind.”
“Originally, Sleeping Beauty looked a
lot like Audrey Hepburn; she was
softer, rounder, more like the
‘designy’ Disney girl.” –Ron Dias, animation artist
Opposite page: “Santa Ynez Memory.” Below “Paradise.” © Eyvind Earle Publishing LLC
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Page 20
110 pounds of baggage, $21 in his pocket and a whole lot of
watercolor paper, he left his mother in Los Angeles and
painted his way to his grandmother’s home in New York.
During 42 days of traveling, he painted 42 watercolors and
wrote 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 in
New 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 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 clothed by autumn in
savage garb. There is poetry in them and imagination and
extraordinary 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 his
more 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.” He
paused, perhaps returning to the fall of 1937 and the young
man who painted that watercolor. “I paint now as I painted
then. I don’t plan it; I just paint. Most of the time I don’t
know what it will be when I finish, but it’s always a welcome
surprise.”
In honor of its 50th anniversary, a digitally remastered edition
of Sleeping Beauty was released on Oct. 7. Eyvind Earle’s artwork remains on exhibition at Gallery 21 on Sixth between
Dolores and Lincoln in Carmel. Call 831-625-1738 or visit
www.gallery21.com.•
© Eyvind Earle Publishing LLC
www Visit artsandlivingmag.com to see more images of Eyvind Earle
and Sleeping Beauty.
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 of
styling, background and color for Sleeping Beauty.
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© Disney Enterprises, Inc.
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Page 21
© Eyvind Earle Publishing LLC
© Disney Enterprises, Inc.
When Eyvind Earle was hired to paint the backgrounds for Disney’s
original 1959 film Sleeping Beauty he recreated the image of Princess
Aurora to complement the scenery, making her more angular and
graceful rather than soft and cuddly as originally envisioned.
Eyvind Earle painted all of his stunning images by hand.
Today they are reproduced individually using a complex
hand-pulled serigraph process.
prises, Inc.
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