Illustration: Mabel Lucie Attwell's Peter Pan and Wendy

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 3 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about children's book illustrators.


There often seems to be a disconnect between the illustrators Walt Disney hired to do inspirational artwork for his films and the designs he actually ended up using. On Snow White, Disney hired the amazing painter, Gustaf Tenggren; but his instructions to him were to paint in the style of Arthur Rackham. For Peter Pan, he hired the illustrator David Hall, but the film itself doesn't resemble his work at all. Instead, it seems to be a "Disneyfication" of Mabel Lucie Attwell's illustrations for the 1921 edition of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan & Wendy.

Attwell was born in 1879 and received some education at the Regent School of Art and Heatherley's School of Art in London, but she grew bored with her academic studies and dropped out to focus on her own interests... painting cherubic children and fairies. Her work wasn't very warmly received at first by galleries and agents, but when her first batch of paintings sold out in three days, they became much more enthusiastic. Attwell illustrated greeting cards and children's books, the most famous of which we are featuring today, Peter Pan & Wendy.

Disney didn't appropriate Attwell's baby faced characters, but he did use some of the same details of costume and setting, and placed the emphasis of his visual storytelling on many of the same elements. Attwell's designs lean a bit too heavily on formula, but there is a distinctive delicate appeal to her style. Enjoy.














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If you enjoyed this article, see also... Little Verses Part One and Part Two and The New Golden Song Book Part One, Part Two and Part Three, Felix Lorioux's Tom Thumb, Puss in Boots, Fables De La Fontaine Part One and Part Two, Le Buffon des Enfants, Rojankovsky's Frog Went A-Courtin', Tibor Gergely's A Day In The Jungle, Gustaf Tenggren's The Little Trapper, Uncle Remus Stories Part One and Part Two.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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