Animated architecture: Walt Disney & The Wallace Collection
An exhibition pairing French rococo decorative arts alongside the Walt Disney Studio drawings & films they inspired leads to a fascinating relationship between two unexpected creative disciplines. With European interior design & architecture inspiring concept art for films including Cinderella & Beauty and the Beast, there is much of interest between the arts of animation & architecture.
The Wallace Collection in London, tucked behind the shops and tourists of Oxford Street, offers unexpected sanctuary from the city, surrounded by paintings by Titians, Rubens, and Van Dyck, vast collections of suits of armour, and a fine collection 1700s French decorative arts.
What you may not expect to find is the presence of the Beauty, the Beast, Cinderella, and Walt Disney - but with temporary exhibition Inspiring Walt Disney: The animation of French Decorative Arts, a meeting of different ages and artforms offers a playful way to reconsider both periods. In an exhibition displaying rococo decorative arts and artworks from the Wallace Collection alongside visiting loans, numerous Disney artefacts - from final cells, concept art, and sketches - the aesthetics, and sometimes exact objects, which inspired Disney are shown next to the animated responses.
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figs.i-iii
The opening room features a home video recorded by Disney on a European tour, hand-held footage if the trip including Versaille’s hall of mirrors and gardens were taken back to his Hollywood studios along with 335 illustrated books which formed a critical element of research and reference for his artists. It wasn’t his first trip to the continent, in 1918 as a Red Cross Ambulance Corps driver he was stationed close to Versailles, then Paris, and then picturesque French commune Neufchâteau. It wasn’t long after returning from the Great War that he formed an animation studio with his brother Roy. Two years after his 1930s European trip, Disney’s studio released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), their first animated feature.
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figs. iv,v
Over the years, Disney also collected over one thousand pieces of miniature furniture and ceramics, and it’s internal decorative elements and design which largely inform the Wallace Collection installation. Wonderful 1760s pink and green tower vases by the Sevres Manufactory melt architecture into object, while an ornate 1720s pedestal clock directly relates to Peter J. Hall’s concept art for Beauty and the Beast character Majordomo.
There is a neat direct connection between the collection and a moment of more recent Disney work, Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s 1767 painting Les hasards heureux de l_escarpolette (The Swing) which inspired a number of Disney films. Having originally been seen by Disney artists in 1989 for inclusion in 1991s Beauty and the Beast before being edited out, then included in 2010’s Tangled before again getting cut, it finally found its reference with Anna of Arendelle in 2013s Frozen.
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figs. vi-viii
In part the weight upon the decorative arts and objects is because this is where the strength of the Wallace Collection lies. In its previous incarnation, in New York’s Metropolitcan Museum of Modern Art, there was more scope for a look at Disney’s relationship to architecture, while at its next stop at California’s Huntingdon Museum there may again be a look at the architectural-scale content of both Disney’s animations as well as the resorts and parks.
This is not to say there are not moments of real interest for those interested in architecture and interiors in the London exhibition. A whole series of sketches by Hans Bacher of the Château de Chambord follows a process from architectural axonometric drawing, to interpretive sketches, and then to internal drawings which led into the final film.
There are also atmospheric interiors for Cindarella (1950) by unkown studio artists, and beautiful architectural guaches by Mary Blair for the same film, with a sense of artistic style and looseness which was often stripped out of the final films but is present within initial conceptual images.
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figs.ix-xi
Despite such a strong interest in the 17th century French rococo period, the architectural inspiration for Disney’s films often looked further back in time for final designs, finding the rigid underpinning geometry of palaces such as Versailles and Loire Valley châteaux including Chambord not exciting or imaginative enough. So for Cinderella Mary Blair eventually pulled more from medieval castle architecture than the initial concept sketches, and Beauty and the Beast referencing the German Schloss Neuschwanstein more than French palaces.
![]()
fig.xii
What you may not expect to find is the presence of the Beauty, the Beast, Cinderella, and Walt Disney - but with temporary exhibition Inspiring Walt Disney: The animation of French Decorative Arts, a meeting of different ages and artforms offers a playful way to reconsider both periods. In an exhibition displaying rococo decorative arts and artworks from the Wallace Collection alongside visiting loans, numerous Disney artefacts - from final cells, concept art, and sketches - the aesthetics, and sometimes exact objects, which inspired Disney are shown next to the animated responses.
figs.i-iii
The opening room features a home video recorded by Disney on a European tour, hand-held footage if the trip including Versaille’s hall of mirrors and gardens were taken back to his Hollywood studios along with 335 illustrated books which formed a critical element of research and reference for his artists. It wasn’t his first trip to the continent, in 1918 as a Red Cross Ambulance Corps driver he was stationed close to Versailles, then Paris, and then picturesque French commune Neufchâteau. It wasn’t long after returning from the Great War that he formed an animation studio with his brother Roy. Two years after his 1930s European trip, Disney’s studio released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), their first animated feature.
figs. iv,v
Over the years, Disney also collected over one thousand pieces of miniature furniture and ceramics, and it’s internal decorative elements and design which largely inform the Wallace Collection installation. Wonderful 1760s pink and green tower vases by the Sevres Manufactory melt architecture into object, while an ornate 1720s pedestal clock directly relates to Peter J. Hall’s concept art for Beauty and the Beast character Majordomo.
There is a neat direct connection between the collection and a moment of more recent Disney work, Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s 1767 painting Les hasards heureux de l_escarpolette (The Swing) which inspired a number of Disney films. Having originally been seen by Disney artists in 1989 for inclusion in 1991s Beauty and the Beast before being edited out, then included in 2010’s Tangled before again getting cut, it finally found its reference with Anna of Arendelle in 2013s Frozen.
figs. vi-viii
In part the weight upon the decorative arts and objects is because this is where the strength of the Wallace Collection lies. In its previous incarnation, in New York’s Metropolitcan Museum of Modern Art, there was more scope for a look at Disney’s relationship to architecture, while at its next stop at California’s Huntingdon Museum there may again be a look at the architectural-scale content of both Disney’s animations as well as the resorts and parks.
This is not to say there are not moments of real interest for those interested in architecture and interiors in the London exhibition. A whole series of sketches by Hans Bacher of the Château de Chambord follows a process from architectural axonometric drawing, to interpretive sketches, and then to internal drawings which led into the final film.
There are also atmospheric interiors for Cindarella (1950) by unkown studio artists, and beautiful architectural guaches by Mary Blair for the same film, with a sense of artistic style and looseness which was often stripped out of the final films but is present within initial conceptual images.
figs.ix-xi
Despite such a strong interest in the 17th century French rococo period, the architectural inspiration for Disney’s films often looked further back in time for final designs, finding the rigid underpinning geometry of palaces such as Versailles and Loire Valley châteaux including Chambord not exciting or imaginative enough. So for Cinderella Mary Blair eventually pulled more from medieval castle architecture than the initial concept sketches, and Beauty and the Beast referencing the German Schloss Neuschwanstein more than French palaces.
fig.xii
Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts
is on at the Wallace Collection, London, 6 April - 16 October 2022.
www.wallacecollection.org/whats-on/inspiring-walt-disney-the-animation-of-french-decorative-arts
visit
Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts is on at the Wallace Collection, 6 April - 16 October 2022.
www.wallacecollection.org/whats-on/inspiring-walt-disney-the-animation-of-french-decorative-arts
images
fig.i Pedestal clock, attributed to André-Charles Boulle, movement by Louis Mynuël, c. 1720–25 (F42 on pedestal) © The Wallace Collection.
fig.ii Beauty and the Beast, 1991, Peter J. Hall, Concept art, watercolour, marker, and graphite on paper © Disney.
fig.iii The Swing at the Inspiring Walt Disney exhibition at the Wallace Collection © The Trustees of the Wallace Collection.
figs.iv-vi Inspiring Walt Disney exhibition at the Wallace Collection 2022 © The Wallace Collection.
fig.vii Lisa Keene and Kyle Strawitz, Rapunzel on a swing, CGI test for Tangled (2010), 2008 Film frame, Walt Disney Animation Research Library © Disney.
fig.viii Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Les hasards heureux de l_escarpolette (The Swing) © The Wallace Collection.
fig.xi Cinderella, 1950, Mary Blair, Concept art, gouache on board © Disney.
fig.xii,xiii Cinderella, 1950, Disney Studio Artist, Background painting, gouache on paper © Disney.
fig.xiii Exhibition poster © The Wallace Collection
publication date
10 April 2022
tags
Beauty and the Beast, Hans Bacher, Mary Blair, Château de Chambord, Cinderella, Frozen, Peter J Hall, Lisa Keene, Sevres Manufactory, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Kyle Strawitz, Tangled, The Wallace Collection, Versailles, Walt Disney.
fig.ii Beauty and the Beast, 1991, Peter J. Hall, Concept art, watercolour, marker, and graphite on paper © Disney.
fig.iii The Swing at the Inspiring Walt Disney exhibition at the Wallace Collection © The Trustees of the Wallace Collection.
figs.iv-vi Inspiring Walt Disney exhibition at the Wallace Collection 2022 © The Wallace Collection.
fig.vii Lisa Keene and Kyle Strawitz, Rapunzel on a swing, CGI test for Tangled (2010), 2008 Film frame, Walt Disney Animation Research Library © Disney.
fig.viii Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Les hasards heureux de l_escarpolette (The Swing) © The Wallace Collection.
fig.xi Cinderella, 1950, Mary Blair, Concept art, gouache on board © Disney.
fig.xii,xiii Cinderella, 1950, Disney Studio Artist, Background painting, gouache on paper © Disney.
fig.xiii Exhibition poster © The Wallace Collection
publication date
10 April 2022
tags
Beauty and the Beast, Hans Bacher, Mary Blair, Château de Chambord, Cinderella, Frozen, Peter J Hall, Lisa Keene, Sevres Manufactory, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Kyle Strawitz, Tangled, The Wallace Collection, Versailles, Walt Disney.
