Eyvind Earle

About Eyvind Earle

Sleeping Beauty’s painted forests and 800 Christmas cards

Eyvind Earle was an American artist born in New York in 1916.

“Earle’s sequence should be preserved and played back for years on end.”

Eyvind Earle began his prolific career at age ten when his father gave him a challenging choice, he choose both reading and painting. From the time of his first one-man showing in France when he was 14, his fame had grown steadily, and at 21 he bicycled across country paying his way by painting 42 watercolors.

Eyvind Earle opened at the Charles Morgan Galleries in 1937, his first of many one-man shows in New York, and two years later at his third consecutive showing, the exhibition sold out and the Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased one of his paintings for their permanent collection.

Eyvind Earle’s earliest work was strictly realistic, but after studying masters like Van Gogh, Cézanne, Rockwell Kent and Georgia O’Keeffe, he came into his own unique style characterized by a simplicity, directness and surety of handling by the age of 21.

Eyvind Earle joined Walt Disney studios in 1951 as an assistant background painter, and he created the look of “Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom,” which won an Academy Award, and he was responsible for the styling and background for the highly acclaimed movie “Sleeping Beauty.”

Eyvind Earle also painted the dioramas for Sleeping Beauty’s Castle at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and his work was also seen on television, including an 18-minute version of the story of the Nativity that he did in 1963 for Tennessee Ernie Ford’s Special “The Story of Christmas.”

• Born in New York in 1916, died in 2000.
• Had his first one-man show in France at age 14.
• He worked at Disney and created the look of “Sleeping Beauty.”
• He painted over 800 Christmas card designs.
• He received the Windsor McCay Award for lifetime achievement in 1998.

Eyvind Earle’s career encompassed many fields, including book illustrating, magazine covers, animated comercials and television specials, and in 1998 he recieved the Windsor McCay Award for lifetime achievement from the International Animated Film Society.

Eyvind Earle adapted his creative landscapes to Christmas cards in the 1940s, painting more than 800 designs that have sold more than 300 million copies through American Artist Group, making him one of the most successful Christmas card artists in history.

Art Category Fact: Background painting in animation is a specialized art form where artists create the environments and settings for animated films, and it requires a deep understanding of color, composition, and atmosphere to support the narrative, with notable background artists including Eyvind Earle, Mary Blair, and Al Hirschfeld, whose work has defined the visual style of many classic Disney films.

“Art is the most beautiful of all lies.” Claude Debussy