Inspiring Walt Disney at the Wallace Collection on the Thursday, 14th April 2022
Inspiring Walt Disney at the Wallace Collection on the Thursday, 14th April 2022
Born in 1901 in Chicago,
USA, Disney attempted to join the army from High School in 1918 but his
application was rejected as he was too young.
Instead, Disney forged a birth certificate and joined up as a Red Cross
ambulance driver, arriving in France in November after the armistice. This was Disney’s first encounter with Paris
where he glimpsed the rococo visions that he was later to incorporate into his
films. Later, in the 1930s, Disney
returned to Paris to see the sights once again and while he was there, he
acquired a library of 330 books, consisting of European fairy tales and books
of art and architecture which he used as a basis for some of his film projects.
The Wallace Collection is
an endowment from the Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the
illegitimate son of the fourth Marquess.
Wallace’s widow, Julie Amelie Charlotte Castelnau, died intestate and
bequeathed the collection to the nation.
The Wallace Collection consists of the art, furniture, decorative art,
design of families of France’s ancient regime that was sold off to the
Marquesses of Hertford at the time of the French Revolution. In France, the Directory of the First
Republic had declared Year Zero of the revolution which meant that all previous
history was obsolete. In fact, the
Directory wanted to destroy all signs of the previous regime (sceptics might
say, in case the people realised how worthwhile it had been!). They even instigated a new calendar with new
months of the year. By drawing a line
under the past, the Directory, and its instrument the infamous Committee of
Public Safety under Maximillien Robespierre and Saint Just instigated the Reign
of Terror (1793-4) which saw many of France’s aristocracy selling off their
goods and leaving. If they could,
otherwise many succumbed to the charms of Monsieur Guillotine! The Marquesses of Hertford were some of the
benefactors of this sale.
The rococo period is also
known as the late Baroque and is usually regarded as the final flowering of
baroque art. The signature of rococo art
is exuberance, excess, abundant curves, and theatricality. The catholic church encouraged the use of
rococo design in the architecture of churches and cathedrals, a kind of antidote
to dour Lutheranism whose testament was faith without frills. This excessive style can be observed in
catholic churches and cathedrals of the mid-eighteenth century.
One of the important
designers for Disney was Mary Blair who joined the Studios in April 1940. She was a designer who provided templates for
the concept art of Disney’s cartoons throughout the 1940s and early 1950s. The exhibition provides examples of her concept
art such as Cinderella’s magic carriage (1940s, gouache, graphite, and pastel
on board) and Cinderella looking into a mirror (1940s, gouache and ink on
board) both from Cinderella (1950).
Disney designers like
Mary Blair are paralleled with French artists and designers of the rococo
period working in the porcelain factory at Sevres near Paris. Sevres was the leading producer of porcelain
in Europe from the mid-eighteenth century onwards and the exhibition details
the work of some of its leading designers such as Etienne Maurice Falconet and
his work The Magic Lantern (c.1760).
This work shows children fascinated by a magic lantern, a kind of early
form of cinema where images were cast on a screen and viewed through a peep
hole. Magic lanterns were common at
fairs and circuses before the advent of more sophisticated forms of amusement
like cinema and were based on the scientific effect known as camera
obscura. In this a hole is made in a
screen and an image is projected upside down onto another surface, a scientific
phenomenon known to have been observed since the 5th century BC.
Walt Disney was using the
science of cinematic art which included camera obscura and techniques
like persistence of vision whereby movement was created when more than 10
frames per second fooled the eye. At the
end of the 1920s cinema ceased to be silent and a few years later technicolour
was also discovered. Even though
technology was advancing rapidly the fundamentals of the art of storytelling
remained the same, engaging an audience with characters they cared about,
creating tension and resolution in narratives.
The exhibition provides
other examples of design since rococo was a design inspired movement, from
minor to major unlike other movements whose evolution was the reverse, artists
and architects were at the forefront.
The clock attributed to Andre-Charles Boulle (cabinet maker) and Louis
Mynuel (movement maker) c.1720-25 provided Disney designer Peter J Hall with
inspiration for the character of Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast
(1991). The clock’s black veneer,
consisting of brass and turtle shell is an example of Boulle marquetry whose
sumptuous appearance is ideal for Cogsworth’s court dress.
Another rococo
masterpiece that came from Paris to the Wallace Collection is Les hasards
heureux de l’escarpolette (The Swing) by Jean-Honore Fragonard, c.
1767-8 (Oil on canvas). The painting
depicts a girl on a swing. Her lover
hides in the bushes, their eyes meet, the girls shoe flies off. A statue of Eros holds its finger to its
lips. This improbable situation is
explained by the eighteenth-century custom of supervising couples with the
presence of chaperones. This painting
summons up the possibility of a couple being in love with each other, feelings
that are felt beyond stiff, unsatisfactory social mores and conventions. The painting was originally going to be
incorporated into Beauty and the Beast because it is animated, amusing,
and theatrical but in the end, it was omitted but later used in Disney’s Tangled
and Frozen.
These are some examples
of the ways in which rococo design influenced the look of Disney’s films,
meaning that the artwork of the eighteenth-century was preserved and found a
new audience in the 20th century.
Inspiring Walt Disney is a glimpse not only into the workings of Disney
but also into a lost era, this exhibition is absolutely required viewing.
Paul Murphy, April 14th
2022
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