Sleeping Beauty Another Way

Danish illustrator Kay Nielsen moved from his native Copenhagen, where he was born in 1886, to Los Angeles in 1936, and worked for the Walt Disney Studios from late 1938 to 5/23/41. His most well-known work was, of course, done for Fantasia.

Later in his life, in 1953, he returned for a short stint on Sleeping Beauty, but in the end, the styling of Eyvind Earle was chosen for the film. Nielsen died, forgotten, in 1957.

For a long time, only one of his Sleeping Beauty pieces was known to exist, in the ARL. It is pictured in John Canemaker's beautiful book "Before the Animation Begins" (Hyperion 1996).The caption reads: "The only example of Nielsen's art made during his brief return to Disney in 1953 to work on Sleeping Beauty (1959)."

Since then, however, a number of Nielsen's pieces have appeared on the market, sold through the reputable Van Eaton Galleries. They became available when a high profile Disney artist passed away. Over the years, I have collected the images from Mike's site, and I thought you might like to see these. The pastels are done on black paper on which the standard storyboard "Form P-212 B-4" is printed in white.

If you click a picture you'll see the actual image that I downloaded (without my color corrections). There is a big difference in quality: on some you can see the photographer's reflection in the protecting cell. Some of the pastel color was transferred onto these, but in all their state was pretty good.

First we have Seq. 08.0, "Boy Meets Girl."Here, the boy meets the girl, and he asks "Will you be here tomorrow?" I actually acquired this one, so here is another view.The caption reads "She's a princess."

[Addition: this one was sold by Hake's in August 2013]

Then Seq. 13.0 "Kings at King Stephan's Castle."
Called 13.1, this is Seq. 14.0 "Girl Pricks Finger."
Seq. 17.0 "Prince Captured."
Seq. 20.0 became Seq. 19.0 "Fight."Above image is most reminiscent of Nielsen's wonderful stylings for the Night on Bald Mountain sequence in Fantasia.


Finally a few other images I found through the magic of Google:[In the comments, David Lesjak points at the original page for the above image.]

So there you have it - 17 images so far...

For those who just tuned in, there are two Danish artists with similar names. Kai Nielsen (1882-1924) is a famous sculptor, while above Kay Nielsen is famous for his wonderful early 1900's book illustrations and his work for Disney. A book about his work was slated for release "next month" since 2009.

Remember that another famous Dane needs YOUR support!

(I know this posting is a bit of a different format, but I felt the art was worth a better look!)