You may not know the name Eyvind Earle but you certainly know his work, if Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan or Lady and the Tramp sound at all familiar. A visit to the Walt Disney Family Museum was firmly on our map, but Awaking Beauty: The Art of Eyvind Earle, a retrospective about the life and work of the artist behind some of Disney’s timeless stories that marked the childhood of kids all over the world -myself included- was a double win.
The exhibition featured more than 250 works, including concept paintings for Lady and the Tramp and artworks for Sleeping Beauty. But, more importantly, it included an extensive collection of Earle’s lush landscapes in the artist’s very distinctive style, as well as serigraphs, watercolours, sculpture, commercial illustrations (two examples of which we saw in the teaser, yesterday) – the extend of Earle’s work seems limitless. 
Self Portrait Sketch, 1925 (age 9-10)
Botticelli Woman, 1936
Graphite on paper
Scratchboards created for
Horizon Bound on a Bicycle:
The Autobiography of Eyvind Earle (1991)
Ink on scratchboard
[In 1937, at the age of 21, Eyvind Earle bicycled across the country from Hollywood, California, to Monroe, New York, on a 45 day trip. He painted 42 water colors and wrote a 10,000 page diary along the way. At the conclusion of the expedition, Charles Morgan Gallery in New York exhibited all the watercolors.
Eyvind created many water colors during his life; during certain time periods they were his primary focus. Occasionally he had shows which solely exhibited his watercolors, some of which have been declared to be his finest work.] (source)
New York, 1939
Watercolour on paper
Little Girl, 1939
Watercolour on paper
Winter Oak, 1997
Oil on Masonite
Face 2, 1981
Ink on scratchboard
Bearded Man, 1980
Ink and varnish on scratchboard
Portrait of a Woman, 1981
Ink on paper
Portrait of a Woman, 1975
Ink on paper
[The sleek glow of his acrylics and oils is the result of a custom-made formula Earle created himself for the varnishes he used, often tinting them with glues. He also experimented with marine varnishes which were impervious to water and did not require the addition of glue. Because he needed to wait for the layers to dry, Earle often worked on up to thirty paintings at the same time.] (source)
”In nature when I look I see trees, some of them are such that they thrill me with their perfection and their sweeping lines and certain mood they seem to have. Windswept plains give me something that can’t be seen. In every tree I feel as though I could see the soul of that tree. It is alive. It is a person. And if beauty be related to the truth, harmony and balance must be there, and there must be movement because in nature all things move. And there are certain laws such as the law of duality. Everything has its opposite. Nothing is without its opposite. If I want a bright light in a painting, I must have a dark shadow. If I want a color to look very warm, I must have also a very cold color, and so on and on forever. But when I paint, I forget the things I know. I just sit there painting away, trying to get the feeling into my painting that I feel inside. Whatever beauty is, I feel it, and as long as I can I shall try to find more and more beauty, and to put it down so that others can see what I have seen.” – Eyvind Earle
Blue Tree, 1994
Oil on masonite
Tall Tree and Barn, 1969
Oil on canvas on wood
Green Forest, 1970
Acrylic on Masonite
Pastures in Early Spring, 1996
Oil on masonite
Mustard Field, 1974
Oil on masonite
Coastal Paradise, 1995
Oil on masonite
Where Eagles Fly, 1993
Oil on masonite
Giant Oak, 1996
Oil on masonite
Flower Fantasy, 1980
Watercolour on paper
Three Noble Horses, 1993
Oil on masonite
Hillside Magic, 1976
Oil on masonite
Orchard, 1984
Oil on canvas
Three Live Oaks, 1983
Oil on canvas
Concept paintings, c. 1959
Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Gouache on paperboard
Awaking Beauty: The Art of Eyvind Earle was on show at The Walt Disney Family Museum, until beginning of January 2018.
July 8th, 2017
Walt and Ruth Disney on the front of 1249 Tripp Avenue, Chicago before leaving for Marceline, Missouri ca. 1906
Walt ca. 1919
In 1917, the United States had ended its policy of neutrality and joined the Allies in the war. By mid-1918, war fever had swept the nation. Although Walt was anxious to take part in this patriotic effort, he was too young to join the military. That summer, he learned about the American Ambulance Corps, a division of the Red Cross that needed drivers and had a lower age requirement. He went down to the office and enlisted, but quickly learned he needed a birth certificate in order to obtain a passport. Official birth certificates in those days were not regularly issued. Walt needed a notarized affidavit confirming his birthdate with signatures of both parents. Elias -his father- refused to sign the form declaring it a ”death warrant for his son”. Flora conceded, preferring to ”know where Walt was than having him run off”. With the signed and notarized affidavit, Walt still had one hurdle: the minimum age for the ambulance corps was 17 and he was only 16. As soon as Flora signed the paper, Walt grabbed the pen and changed his birthdate from 1901 to 1900, and with that he was finally on his way to France.
Walt in his Red Cross uniform, ca. 1919
Margaret Winkler
The Disney family in front of the studio
Toasting their 41 years of marriage, July 13, 1966.
The Humble Fabulist 