Disney Silver Series: The Knighting of Pooh

DISNEY SILVER SERIES: THE KNIGHTING OF POOH

Peter Ellenshaw and Harrison Ellenshaw

MEDIUM: Giclée on  Canvas
SIZE: 15" x 22.5"
EDITION SIZE: 500
ARTIST: Peter Ellenshaw and Harrison Ellenshaw
SKU: DFA-SS-KNIGHTINGOFPOOH

ABOUT THE MEDIUM:  Silver Series prints are giclée prints using archival inks and materials and come fully framed and ready to hang.  Each print includes a Certificate of Authenticity.  Please note: Silver Series are custom framed and molding styles are based on current availability. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST: William Samuel Cook “Peter” Ellenshaw was an English matte designer, special effects creator, and master painter.  He mentored under Percy Pop Day who played a pivotal role and mentored him on painting on canvas and glass, which was to create matte background form film.

After serving his country as an RAF pilot in World War II, Ellenshaw returned to work for Mr. Day at the studios. After a brief yearlong stint at MGM, Ellenshaw left in 1947 upon receiving a call to work for Walt Disney Studios on the film, Treasure Island. As it turned out, his partnership with Disney would last over thirty years and earn him five Oscar nominations. For his work on "Mary Poppins" in which he recreated scenes of Edwardian London in 102 different mattes, he won an Academy Award. Walt Disney became Ellenshaw's mentor and friend, spurring him on continually to perfect his craft and push the creative envelope.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:  Many sons growing up in the shadow of a famous father feel that they want to carve their own paths in life. “That was me,” says Harrison Ellenshaw, son of Disney Legend and master painter Peter Ellenshaw.

Harrison graduated from Whittier College with a BA in psychology in the early 70s.  The recession made it difficult to find a job and his father mentioned an opening in the matte department at Disney.  After meeting with Department Head Alan Maley, they agreed on a six-month trial. 

“Alan became my mentor,” Harrison says, “and it was due to his enthusiasm and encouragement that I really got bitten by the film bug. After about four years, Alan Maley retired. With Maley’s support, Harrison took over as department head.

Then, Harrison got a phenomenal break to do some work on Star Wars. At this point, Harrison begins to really strike out on his own, away from his father’s legacy. His work on “Star Wars” was so well received that he was asked to return to work on “The Empire Strikes Back”.

By this time, having clearly carved a niche for himself, Harrison had no problem working with his father on Disney’s “The Black Hole” in 1979. Harrison then went solo again to add his unforgettable touch to “Tron”, one of the most unique and visually stunning films ever, now a cult classic.

While working on an incredibly colorful film he viewed an exhibition of Fauve artists, Harrison began to change the way he approached color.  Fauve, which in French means “wild beasts”, was a name given to a group of up-and-coming rebel French artists in the 1900s, who included among their ranks, Henri Matisse and Andre Derain. The Fauve painters took a traditional art form and began using forms and colors which were not found in nature, painting familiar objects with startlingly “wrong” colors, in an attempt to “liberate color”.

After work on "Captain Eo," "Superman IV," "Ghost" and other films, a memorable year for Harrison was 1989 when he worked on “Dick Tracy”. “The matte paintings were visually the star of that film,” he recalls. “And by then I was doing some fine art painting on my own. But it was around that time when I was working on this incredibly colorful film that an exhibition of Fauve artists came to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.”

 “Up until this point, I had been painting trees with black, gray, and brown trunks and green leaves,” he points out. “And then I came across the Fauves, who were only in existence a few years, and their intense use of color. They had done something I really enjoyed and appreciated. So, I began to paint far more colorfully than I had in the past. Today, I enjoy painting as much as ever and I enjoy doing things that are really colorful. The great thing is that now with the giclée process of making prints, you can match the colors perfectly.”