Celebrating 100 Years of Disney: PART II Signature Auction

Celebrating 100 Years of Disney: PART II Signature Auction

December 4th, 2023

Jerry Beck

The long-range impact of Walt Disney’s vision has shaped history. From technological breakthroughs in sight and sound to how we tell and understand stories, from care in the smallest detail to the pleasure of grand spectacle, one of the most popular and enduring of all American institutions is responsible for the modern world’s relationship with entertainment.

Throughout 2023 the Walt Disney Company’s 100th anniversary has been underway the world over. In June, Heritage celebrated this centennial, as well as its successful ongoing relationship with Disney’s glorious history, with a generous and wide-ranging auction that brought in nearly $5 million. Now it follows that record-setting event with a long-awaited follow-up: Celebrating 100 Years of Disney! (1923 – 2023) PART II Signature Auction, which takes place Dec. 8-11. The auction is packed with more than 1500 lots that showcase Disney’s spectacular run thus far, particularly via its most potent cultural touchstone: its animation.

“This auction curation was truly inspired by the “100 years of Disney” (1923 – 2023) celebration,” says Jim Lentz, Heritage’s Vice President of Animation and Anime Art. “The artwork represented in this sale is some of the best of the best Disney animation art we’ve ever seen!”

Disney’s Golden Age was of course shaped by iconic features such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Pinocchio, and its dominance in animation evolved toward an astoundingly resonant Renaissance era with gems like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King. And given the significance of this Disney anniversary year, Heritage pays homage to the animated feature film that started it all – Walt Disney’s 1937 masterpiece Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This December event features Heritage’s largest and most significant collection of artwork from this landmark film, and this section’s highlight is a staggering hand-inked, hand-painted production cel featuring all seven dwarfs – Doc, Bashful, Sneezy, Sleepy, Happy, Grumpy and Dopey – in their famous “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go!” scene. To boot, this cel is on its Samuel Armstrong hand-painted Key Master production background. It is in other words an inarguable and complete work of art.

Another masterpiece from Disney’s Golden Age is a Gustaf Tenggren concept painting from Disney’s second animated feature film, Pinocchio. This magnificent ink and watercolor concept painting, with its rich backstory, is rendered in Tenggren’s unmistakable style and was created later in the film’s development, with characters depicted close to their final form. In that lyrical and gorgeous Tenggren watercolor effect, the scene takes place on Geppetto’s shipwrecked boat (inside Monstro the Whale) as he notices Pinocchio’s new ears and a tail. This remarkable survivor comes with equally remarkable provenance: During Disney’s move from the old Hyperion studios to the new facilities in Burbank, Disney story man Eric Gurney rescued it when he noticed it, along with other drawings, being swept up and destined for the trash. Tenggren’s painting has remained in the Gurney family collection ever since, and Mr. Gurney has handwritten a note detailing its recovery, which is included in the lot.

The most famous and beloved artist of Disney’s Golden Age, Mary Blair, is so popular with seasoned collectors that for its Disney events Heritage devotes an entire section to Blair’s work titled The Art and Flair of Mary Blair. For the December event, the highlight here is an astonishing and Walt Disney-commissioned mural by Blairthat she created during the making of The Three Caballeros as a gift to the actress Carmen Miranda, who had served as a goodwill ambassador on behalf of Disney during a diplomatic excursion through South America. This well-documented work hung in Carmen Miranda’s home. It’s signed by Blair and is the largest work from the artist that Heritage has seen.

The painting, considered lost, comes to market for the first time, directly from the personal collection of Pocahontas director Mike Gabriel, who discovered and rescued this painting from a small tourist art shop in California where its history and provenance were entirely forgotten. This serendipity adds a richness to this tale of a re-surfaced gem. In the painting, the dancing woman is a nod to Carmen Miranda’s sister, Aurora Miranda, who portrayed the live-action character Yaya in The Three Caballeros. In the movie Aurora dances and sings with a crowd of Brazilian men in striped shirts, and at the time of the movie’s release, a similar design of illustrated Brazilian performers in striped shirts was used in a popular press image of Aurora as Yaya.

Works from Mike Gabriel’s collection appear throughout this auction, and walk us from Disney’s Golden Age into its Renaissance with a very special work of original art: The first concept painting of the character Pocahontas that sold the idea of the movie to Disney’s top brass.

When Pocahontas premiered nationally in 1995 at select locations to celebrate the real-world Pocahontas’ 400th birthday, it set a record for the highest-grossing opening weekend on fewer than 50 screens – a record that’s still in place nearly 30 years later. The film would win two Academy Awards, and many believe that Disney’s ongoing tendency to feature strong leading heroines, as with Mulan and Elsa in Frozen, was influenced by Pocahontas’ success. But the movie wouldn’t have existed if not for the original concept painting by Gabriel that he used in the initial pitch meeting. The painting is the first rendition of the character Pocahontas, directly influenced by the character Tiger Lily, Princess of the Neverland Indian Tribe, from Disney’s Peter Pan. According to Gabriel, “By using Tiger Lily as the basis for the pitch art, the film already had a ‘Disney look’ to it when I pitched it to Roy Disney, Michael Eisner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg.” This pitch artwork is a total charmer, brimming with the history of Disney animation charisma – it is an entire narrative in one captivating painting. No wonder the Disney execs were smitten.

“This sale truly has something for every Disney fan,” says Lentz. “The auction really does run the spectacular gamut of 100 years of Disney.”

Images and information about all lots in this sweeping Disney anniversary event can be found at HA.com/7312. Select lots will be on view at Heritage’s Dallas headquarters Dec. 5-7.

Session 1: Lots 16001-16306: 10:00 AM CT, Friday, December 8
Session 2: Lots 17001-17306: 10:00 AM CT, Saturday, December 9
Session 3: Lots 18001-18598: 10:00 AM CT, Sunday, December 10
Session 4: Lots 19001-19479: 10:00 AM CT, Monday, December 11

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Jerry Beck

Writer, cartoon producer and author of more than 15 books on animation history. A former studio exec with Nickelodeon and Disney; currently on the faculty at both CalArts in Valencia and Woodbury University in Burbank, California.