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A remarkable original concept painting by Eyvind Earle for Sleeping Beauty (1959), capturing one of the most lyrical and visually sophisticated moments in Disney history: the forest waltz between Prince Phillip and Princess Aurora.
Signed by Earle in the lower right, this panoramic painting exemplifies his revolutionary approach to animation design, blending fine art, modernism, and medieval influence into a single, unified aesthetic.
Working as both production designer and colour stylist, Earle was responsible for defining the entire visual identity of Sleeping Beauty. His vision replaced the soft, rounded naturalism of earlier Disney films with a more graphic, stylised world influenced by Gothic art, illuminated manuscripts, and Northern Renaissance landscapes. Every tree, hill, and architectural element was designed to interlock rhythmically, giving the film its distinctive sense of harmony and order. The result was not only one of the most ambitious artistic projects ever undertaken at the studio, but also a watershed moment in the history of animation design.
This painting reflects that innovation with extraordinary clarity. The composition is deliberately architectural: fractured tree trunks form natural framing devices, while the dancers occupy the central band of light in a rhythmic balance of colour and geometry. The use of vertical trees and flat colour fields creates an almost musical sense of timing, echoing the waltz's rhythm and the emotional synchrony of the characters. In place of literal realism, Earle's design evokes the timeless quality of an illuminated storybook, every line controlled yet alive with texture and atmosphere.
The painting's elongated horizontal format mirrors Disney's pioneering use of Super Technirama 70, the widescreen process employed for Sleeping Beauty. This technique required entirely new compositional thinking, as every background had to read gracefully across an expanded frame. Earle solved this challenge with precision and elegance, layering his environments in decorative planes that carry the eye naturally from one side of the image to the other.
As a concept painting, this piece would have been presented to Walt Disney himself and senior animators as part of the film's visual development. It defined tone, palette, and emotional temperature for the scene that became one of the film's most iconic sequences. Few of these original Earle concepts survive, and even fewer were personally signed. Each one serves as a masterclass in design, a meeting point between the disciplines of painting, architecture, and motion.
Earle's influence can still be seen across decades of animation and design, from contemporary feature films to high fashion and illustration. His work on Sleeping Beauty transformed the animated background into an art form in its own right, fusing the traditions of European art with the clarity of modern American design.
This example, featuring Aurora and Phillip together within an environment entirely shaped by Earle's vision, represents one of the most desirable subjects an animation collector could hope to find. Romantic, stylised, and utterly timeless, it embodies the height of Disney artistry and remains a symbol of the studio's creative ambition at its most daring. Dimensions (framed): 60 x 36 x 3 cm (23.75" x 14.25" x 1.25")
Sold without copyright; see copyright notice in the Terms and Conditions.
Estimate: £12,000 - 24,000 Ω
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