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About
the Artist…Peter
Ellenshaw
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Peter
Ellenshaw was born in 1913 in Essex, England. As a young man,
he met the British portrait painter, W. Percy Day, O.B.E.
Day was instrumental in developing the highly demanding technique
of matte painting, a special effect whereby an object or landscape
– a castle, a ship, an island, etc. – is painted
on glass and set in front of the camera so that both the real
setting and the painting are filmed as one. A few months after
their meeting, Ellenshaw became Day’s assistant; and
for the next seven years the two artists worked closely together
on such epics as Things to Come and The Thief
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In 1948, the increasing expense of making
films in Hollywood led Walt Disney to England for the production
of four live-action adventure films (Treasure Island, The
Story of Robin Hood, The Sword and The Rose, and Rob Roy).
When Disney met Ellenshaw and became acquainted with his
work, his response was immediate and enthusiastic. Here
was the man who could re-create in Disney's films the historical
England of centuries past and, through matte painting, save
the cost of many difficult location shots.
Ellenshaw
started painting mattes for Walt Disney, beginning with
Disney's first all-live action picture, Treasure Island
(1950). It was the start of a professional and personal
relationship with Walt Disney that was to span nearly three
decades. Ellenshaw also brought his artistry to such Disney
classics as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954),
Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959), Mary
Poppins (1964) and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).
In 1954, Ellenshaw created the first full-color painting
envisioning Disneyland Park; and he won an Academy Award
for special effects for his work on Mary Poppins.
In all, he was involved in 34 films for Walt Disney Productions
between 1947 and 1979. In 1993, Peter Ellenshaw was named
a Disney Legend.
Ellenshaw
maintained his identity as a traditional landscape artist
during his Disney years and always found time evenings and
weekends to work on his own canvases. The relationship to
the actual scenes that inspire his paintings is complex.
The locations of his paintings are frequently recognizable,
but there is never a literal rendering of what one would
see there. Ellenshaw says, "This would never work because
too much of what one sees is superfluous. In composing a
picture, it is necessary to remove the purely accidental
and to search for what is significant. Only then does one
arrive at the truth."
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He
describes his work as his own individual kind of realism;
and when he is finished with a painting, it is because it
represents the truth of a scene as he sees it. For Ellenshaw,
the truth has a great deal to do with light.
With
each passing year, Ellenshaw finds that he becomes more
involved with his painting. His works have become more complex,
and his search for new solutions to the problems of representing
the natural world constantly stimulates and challenges him.
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