How Walt Disney and the Disney Studios wove the aesthetics of French decorative arts into the fairy-tale worlds of&nbsp;beloved animated films, from Cinderella to Beauty and the Beast and beyond &nbsp; Pink castles, talking sofas, and a prince transformed into a teapot: what sounds like fantasies from Walt Disney's pioneering animations could first be found in the colorful salons of Rococo Paris. The films produced by Disney Animation Studios represent almost a century of creativity and are deeply rooted in European storytelling and visual traditions. Exploring Walt Disney's fascination with European art and examining the novel use of French motifs in Disney films and theme parks, this publication features 40 works of eighteenth-century European design--from tapestries and furniture to Boulle clocks and Sèvres porcelain alongside 150 film stills, drawings, and other works on paper from the Walt Disney Animation Studio Library and Walt Disney Archives. The text connects these seemingly disparate art forms through the artists' shared dedication to craftsmanship while also highlighting references to European art in Disney films, including nods to Gothic Revival architecture in Cinderella (1950); bejeweled, medieval manuscripts in Sleeping Beauty (1959); and Rococo-inspired furnishings and objects brought to life in Beauty and the Beast (1991). This book bridges fact and fantasy by drawing remarkable new parallels between Disney's magical creations and their artistic models.

Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts

Arts & Photography

Burchard, Wolf

History & Criticism

Metropolitan Museum of Art

2014 marks the three-hundredth anniversary of the succession of the House of Hanover to the British throne. In celebration of this historic milestone, The First Georgians explores the rich artistic patronage of the early Hanoverian period. Georges I and II, along with Queen Caroline and Frederick, Prince of Wales, were all great patrons of the arts and together they amassed a broad and diverse collection of works. From sculptures, paintings, and miniatures to fascinating examples of the applied arts, including maps, crowns, books, and clocks, their collections reflect the spirit of the early Georgian era. This catalog showcases three hundred full-color photographs of the finest works from among the collection, many of which have never before been published or made available for public display. Produced in Germany, France, and Britain during one of the most dramatic periods of change across all aspects of political, intellectual, and cultural life, the works reflect changing views of science, politics, and art throughout the early to mid-eighteenth century―the period when modern Britain was coming into being. Despite the depth of this collection and its cultural importance, artistic production during the early Hanoverian period has been less well-documented than during the late Hanoverian period. With this volume, Desmond Shawe-Taylor directs our attention to this relatively neglected period.

The First Georgians: Art and Monarchy, 1714-1760

Bird, Rufus

Heard, Kate

Jones, Kathryn

Shawe-Taylor, Desmond

Royal Collection Trust

This monograph examines the wide artistic production of Louis XIV’s most prolific and powerful artist, Charles Le Brun (1619–1690), illustrating the magnificence of his paintings and focusing particularly on the interiors and decorative art works produced according to his designs. In his joint capacities of Premier peintre du roi, director of the Gobelins manufactory and rector of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, Le Brun exercised a previously unprecedented influence on the production of the visual arts – so much so that some scholars have repeatedly described him as ‘dictator’ of the arts in France. The Sovereign Artist explores how Le Brun operated in his diverse fields of activities, linking and juxtaposing his portraiture, history painting and pictorial theory with his designs for architecture, tapestries, carpets and furniture. It argues that Le Brun sought to create a repeatable and easily recognizable visual language associated with Louis XIV, in order to translate the king’s political claims for absolute power into a visual form. How he did this is discussed through a series of individual case studies ranging from Le Brun’s lost equestrian portrait of Louis XIV, and his involvement in the Querelle du coloris at the Académie, to his scheme for 93 Savonnerie carpets for the Grande Galerie at the Louvre, his Histoire du roy tapestry series, his decoration of the now destroyed Escalier des Ambassadeurs at Versailles and the dramatic destruction of the Sun King’s silver furniture. One key theme is the relation between the unity of the visual arts, to which Le Brun aspired, and the strong hierarchical distinctions he made between the liberal arts and the mechanical crafts: while his lectures at the Académie advocated a visual and conceptual unity in painting and architecture, they were also a means by which he attempted to secure the newly gained status of painting as a liberal art, and therefore to distinguish it from the mechanical crafts which he oversaw the production of at the Gobelins. His artistic and architectural aspirations were comparable to those of his Roman contemporary Gianlorenzo Bernini, summoned to Paris in 1665 to design the Louvre’s East façade and to create a portrait bust of Louis XIV. Bernini’s failure to convince the king and Colbert of his architectural scheme offered new opportunities for Le Brun and his French contemporaries to prove themselves capable of solving the architectural problems of the Louvre and to transform it into a palace appropriate “to the grandeur and the magnificence of the prince who [was] to inhabit it” (Jean-Baptiste Colbert to Nicolas Poussin in 1664). The comparison between Le Brun and Bernini not only illustrates how France sought artistic supremacy over Italy during the second half of the 17th century, but further helps to demonstrate how Le Brun himself wanted to be perceived: beyond acting as a translator of the king’s artistic ambition, the artist appears to have sought his own sovereign authority over the visual arts.

The Sovereign Artist: Charles Le Brun and the Image of Louis XIV

Paul Holberton Publishing

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