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Disney's Original Character Drawings Hit the Auction Block

Turner Classic Movies teams up with Bonhams for a sale of original Disney art.
A celluloid of Snow White and the Witch from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Image courtesy of Bonhams

Computer animation has made the days of cartoon cinema seem like the Stone Ages, but a physical archive of drawings, from popular classics like Sleeping Beauty, recently went on sale at Bonhams in the first animation-exclusive event the auction house has seen in 10 years.

Entitled Drawn to Film, the auction sold a total amount of $652,000, boasting almost 400 lots of storyboards, concept drawings, and celluloids, tracing the history of animation art, production and storytelling. Most of the pieces presented came from Disney movies, such as Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Pinocchio, while others included work from famous animators, like Eyvind Earle, who helped stylize some of the popular films.

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A Black and White Celluloid of Minnie and Mickey Mouse From Mickey’s Steam Roller, sold for $16,250 at Bonhams’ Drawn to Film animation art sale. Image courtesy of Bonhams

Walt Disney’s commitment to training animators can be seen in the 71 lots from Silly Symphony, a series of Academy Award-winning animated shorts, accompanied by classical music, which sold at Bonhams for $18,750. Running from 1929 to 1939, Silly Symphony became a platform for experimentation in style, technique, and storyboarding, and also for nurturing new talent.

Carr explains that the Walt Disney Company started selling their used production celluloids—the transparent sheets used to trace and paint animated figures before being filmed—as souvenirs at Disneyland. While costing only a few dollars at the time, the pieces entered the market, where art lovers began to appreciate the detailed drawings and intricacies of the creation process.

An Eyvind Earle concept painting of the dragon from Sleeping Beauty. Image courtesy of Bonhams

“The animation art market really got started in the 80s and early 90s,” says Carr. “It kind of waned in the intervening years, but a lot of the auction houses are returning to this material.”

Disney’s international reputation saw a range of buyers at the sale, bringing in many who would normally shy away from the sometimes confined sales of antique furniture or high-end paintings. The pieces, however, began at modest prices of $800, and ranged to more upscale estimates of $20,000. The top lot, a Carl Barks painting entitled Gold Helmet, went for $31,250.

An early inspirational drawing from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Image courtesy of Bonham

I think it's similar to what you see with rare books,” says Carr. “Those are becoming increasingly popular as people spend more of their time looking at screens and reading ebooks. It’s sort of a similar phenomena in animation because there are so few films today made in traditional animation.”

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A group of storyboards and concept drawings with artistic notes from Peter Pan. Image courtesy of Bonhams

The Drawn to Film sale took place on June 13, 2016, at Bonhams in New York. Find out more about their Entertainment Memorabilia department here.

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