Golden Book: Tibor Gergely's Early Children's Books

Tibor Gergely was born in Budapest, Hungary, and studied and taught in Vienna before the War. He escaped the Nazis and relocated to New York City in 1939, along with his wife. He became a well known illustrator, creating covers for the New Yorker and illustrating countless Little Golden Books. The subjects of his children's books were often anthropomorphic automobiles, trucks, trains or boats. In his free time, Gergely was a fine artist, sketching and painting the city and small seaport towns in New England. In his own art, he was fascinated by bridges, in particular the Brooklyn Bridge. Perhaps the feeling of being planted with one foot in New York City and the other in his native Europe had something to do with that.

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive is fortunate to have been contacted by the heirs of Tibor Gergely. They have a treasure-house full of artwork that they plan to share with us. Check back with this blog in the coming weeks for more soon. To start out, here are two of Gergely's earliest children's books. On the surface, they appear very simple, but there is a great deal of thought in these compositions. Today, many children's book illustrations are cluttered and packed with details. Gergely was at his core a storyteller, so he keeps the illustrations clear enough that even very young children can follow the story.

"WATCH ME" SAID THE JEEP















THE RED, WHITE AND BLUE AUTO



















Many thanks to Terry and Linda for sharing these books with us.

For more of Tibor Gergely's work, see Tibor Gergely's Golden Books Part One and Part Two

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Filmography: Ferdinand the Bull (1938)

I am catching up on my scanning duties here at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, and today we digitized this 1938 storybook based on the Oscar winning Disney short subject, Ferdinand the Bull. This oversized book is very close to the look of the actual cartoon, and I wonder if perhaps Claude Coates might have been the one who painted it.












Looks like some little fingers have gotten to that cover! Thanks to Archive Supporter, Jennifer Roth for sharing this with us.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Mary Blair Song Book

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 50s children's book illustrators.



Mary Blair is one of the most popular illustrators/color stylists among today's animation designers. This book was published in 1955, and it's a great example of Blair at the height of her powers. The full color illustrations are great, but check out the duotones and the page layouts... It's as if she can do no wrong! Her taste is impeccable. Check out the links at the bottom of this post for more beautiful images by Mary Blair.




































For more beautiful illustrations by Mary Blair, see... Little Verses and Baby's House.

If you would like to see more from this book, let me know in the comments below...

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

11.08.08
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Huckleberry Hound Builds A House

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 Golden Book illustrators.


We scanned another Golden Book today... Huckleberry Hound Builds A House. Published in 1959, this was one of the earliest Hanna Barbera books, and it's one of the best. The early H-B characters were beautifully designed and perfectly suited to the TV medium. This book was illustrated by Harvey Eisenberg and Al White.








If you found this to be useful, see also... Harvey Eisenberg's Foxy Fagan Comics, Bozo And His Rocket Ship, Rojankovsky's Frog Went A Courting, Tibor Gergely's A Day In The Jungle, Gustaf Tenggren's The Little Trapper, Uncle Remus Stories Part One and Part Two, Little Verses Part One, Part Two and The New Golden Song Book Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

04.30.08
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: The Sistine Chapel of Golden Books

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 50s children's book illustrators.


Archive supporter Marty Baumann recently took a field trip to the children's reading room of the Mount Pleasant Library in Washington DC to view a little known treasure- a mural by legendary children's book illustrator and animation artist, Aurelius Battaglia.


Titled "Animal Circus", this stunning mural fills the walls in the small room, creating an enveloping cartoony environment. Battaglia was a story artist at Disney on Dumbo and Pinocchio, worked on training films for the war department, and directed on UPA's Gerald McBoing Boing Show. He was also a prolific illustrator, working for Western Publishing's Little Golden Book line, Random House and others. Battaglia created this mural for Roosevelt's WPA project during the depression, shortly before joining the Disney staff.

Marty tells us that these murals were neglected and taken for granted until just recently. The Friends of the Mount Pleasant Library is planning to restore them soon. Unfortunately, the space is small and dark, and the murals have been covered over with thick plexiglas in an attempt to protect them. So these pictures don't fully do the work justice. If anyone in DC has access to a good DSLR with a wide angle lens, please take some shots and panoramas and send them to us. Until then, feast your eyes on these treats!










Many thanks to Marty Baumann for sharing this with us!

If you found this to be useful, see also... Bozo and his Rocket Ship, Rojankovsky's Frog Went A Courting, Tibor Gergely's A Day In The Jungle, Gustaf Tenggren's The Little Trapper, Uncle Remus Stories Part One and Part Two, Little Verses Part One, Part Two and The New Golden Song Book Part One, Part Two and Part Three, and Huckleberry Hound Builds A House.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Illustration: The Genesis of the Golden Book Style

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping examples of classic illustration.


If you are a fan of the Golden Book style, you'll be very interested in today's post. They say a picture is worth a thousand words... Well, using a few pictures and fewer words, I'm going to show you how Gustaf Tenggren developed the Golden Book style for the first time and what inspired him to create it.

If you haven't seen my previous post on Tenggren's Tell It Again Book, take a look at it before you read this one. It will fill you in on the back-story of Tenggren's unhappy experience working at the Disney Studios and how he resolved himself to reinvent his style to suit a new market for children's book illustration. Tenggren was searching for a way to simplify and streamline his style. You can see his experiments with stylization and more basic rendering techniques in these examples...








For inspiration, Tenggen goes all the way back to his roots... the work of his mentor, John Bauer. Here is one of Tenggren's illustrations...


And here is one by Bauer from the Swedish Christmas annual, Bland Tomtar Och Troll...


He also appears to be familiar with the work of his successor on the Bland Tomtar Och Troll series, Einar Norelius. Here is Tenggren...


And here is Norelius...


But halfway through Tenggren's Tell It Again Book comes a huge breakthrough in design. Instead of the full page plates, Tenggren begins to float his characters over the white of the page, wrapping the text around the compositions. Background elements are reduced to small islands on the page, rather than extending out to the edges of a square bounding box. When I first got this book, I wondered why Tenggren had changed format halfway through. Clearly one reason was to save time and streamline the work of producing so many illustrations for a single book. But there was an aesthetic precedent to it as well. The answer has been hanging on my bedroom wall since I was a little boy!

Like Tenggren, my Grandmother was Swedish. In the early 1920s, she took my father to Sweden to visit his Grandparents. It was the only time he was able to meet them, since he lived in Peterborough, Canada, a very long sea voyage away from their farm in Goteborg, Sweden. My great grandparents gave my father a gift to take home with him to remind him of the visit- this Swedish folk art picture...


When I was born, my father gave it to me to hang in my bedroom, and it's been there ever since. Notice the similarity between the forward pitched perspective, the staging of the characters in clear profile silhouettes, and the simple rendering of the figures over the white of the paper on this print and the Tenggren illustrations that follow...










Tenggren had discovered a way to simplify and refine his illustrations even further. Instead of busy backgrounds full of details, he used just enough information to place the characters, and focused his attention on composing the figures. Immediately after publishing this book, Tenggren produced The Poky Little Puppy, the book that was the model for the hundreds of Little Golden Books that followed over the next seventy years. By going back to his roots and synthesizing his Swedish cultural upbringing, Tenggren invented a style that now seems to us to be quintessentially American.

This is a perfect example of how immigrant artists of all kinds suited their artistic voice to their new lives in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. Carlo Vinci's Italian heritage resulted in a superhero mouse who sang opera. Bill Tytla's Eastern European roots helped him create a monster in Fantasia. And Milt Gross' Jewish upbringing expressed itself in comic celebrations of the ethnic vitality of New York City.

The melting pot of American culture sure is rich with cartoons!

For more incredible illustration by Gustaf Tenggren, see... Tenggren's Tell It Again Book Part One, D'Aulnoy Fairy Tales and The Good Dog Book, Tenggren's Grimms Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Heidi, Wonderbook and Juan & Juanita, Sing For Christmas, and Small Fry and the Winged Horse.

See also... Einar Norelius' Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1929 and 1934, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1917, More Norelius and Bauer, Arthur Rackham's Grimm's Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Kay Nielsen's East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Hansel & Gretel, Dulac's H.C. Andersen Part One and Part Two.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illlustration: Tenggren Tell It Again Book 1942

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping examples of classic illustration.


In my last post on the legendary illustrator Gustaf Tenggren, I discussed the stark change in Tenggren's style after leaving the Disney Studios. In the twenties, Tenggren had been paid handsomely for his work. But the wartime economy changed all that. Publishers were no longer able to pay him to work a week or more on a single painting. He was forced to simplify his style.

While at Disney, Tenggren chaffed under the bit of anonymity. It's said that Walt instructed his artists, "If you're going to sign a name to your artwork, spell it 'Walt Disney'." But Tenggren defiantly maintained his individuality, signing many of his key paintings for Pinocchio. He left the studio under unhappy circumstances, and was bitter about the whole episode. But he had learned one thing from Walt... the power of branding one's self.



Tenggren resolved that he would never again waste his skills building a reputation for someone else. He boldly built his name into the masthead of his first major publication after leaving Disney. No longer was it Andersen's Fairy Tales or Tales By The Brothers Grimm... It was The Tenggren Tell-It-Again Book. This led to a series of self-titled books sprinkled throughout his career... Tenggren's Story Book, Tenggren's Jack & The Beanstalk, Tenggren's Bedtime Stories, Tenggren's Farm Stories, and many others.

This particular book is amazing, because it shows Tenggen's thought process and refinement gelling into what would become the classic "Golden Book style". (Click on the Three Little Pigs images above for a vivid example.) He simplifies by going back to his roots... combining the character designs of his mentor John Bauer with the colored pencil and watercolor style of his successor on the Bland Tomtar Och Troll series, Einar Norelius. (See our earlier post on Bauer and Norelius.) It's fascinating to compare similar subjects and compositions with earlier Tenggren paintings or the work of other classic illustrators. Below a few of these images, I have added links to similar pictures and themes. See how Tenggren has distilled the essence of the earlier attempts into a clear and simple presentation that still has plenty of beauty and balance. To read the second half of this article, click through the link at the end of this post.




See also Tenggren's Grimm's Fairy Tales
and Arthur Rackham's Grimm



See also Tenggren's Grimm's Fairy Tales, John Bauer's
Bland Tomtar Och Troll, Einar Norelius'
Bland Tomtar Och Troll, and Arthur Rackham's Grimm




See also Einar Norelius' Bland Tomtar Och Troll


See also Tenggren's Sing For Christmas and Grimm's
Fairy Tales and Dulac's H.C. Andersen


See also Dulac's Tanglewood Tales and
Kay Nielsen's East of The Sun And West Of The Moon


See also Tenggren's Grimm's Fairy Tales, Kay Nielsen's
Hansel & Gretel and Arthur Rackham's Grimm




Read the conclusion of this article in this followup post... The Genesis of the Golden Book Style.

For more incredible illustration by Gustaf Tenggren, see D'Aulnoy Fairy Tales and The Good Dog Book, Tenggren's Grimms Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Heidi, Wonderbook and Juan & Juanita, Sing For Christmas, and Small Fry and the Winged Horse.

See also... Einar Norelius' Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1929 and 1934, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1917, More Norelius and Bauer, Arthur Rackham's Grimm's Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Kay Nielsen's East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Hansel & Gretel, Dulac's H.C. Andersen Part One and Part Two.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Tenggren's Sing For Christmas

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping examples of classic illustration.


Around 1940, Gustaf Tenggren left the Disney Studios a changed man. It's said that he gathered together the paintings he had created up to that point, piled them up in the street and set fire to them. With this single decisive act, he marked a turning point in his artistic career. He never painted in the classic European book illustrator style again. He had resolved himself to create a new style.

I really don't know what brought him to that point. I'd love to know the full story. But you can clearly see the sharp dividing line between old and new in his work. In the first few years of the 1940s, Tenggren struggled to develop a new way of painting- a simplified style that depended on fundamental qualities like skillful composition, expressive texture and unique color harmonies, rather than photo-realistic detail and modeling techniques derived from classical easel painting. This book, along with its sequel Sing For America and the schoolbook reader Runaway Home would lead to the creation of the very first Little Golden Books... The Pokey Little Puppy, The Tawny Scrawny Lion and The Saggy Baggy Elephant. You know the rest of the story...

This book is far from representing Tenggren's best work, but it's an important example of a decisive turning point in Tenggren's career. I'll post some illustrations from Sing For America and Runaway Home soon.














For more incredible illustration by Gustaf Tenggren, see D'Aulnoy Fairy Tales and The Good Dog Book, Tenggren's Grimms Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Heidi, Wonderbook and Juan & Juanita, and Small Fry and the Winged Horse.

See also... Einar Norelius' Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1929 and 1934, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1917, Arthur Rackham's Grimm's Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Illustration: Coronet Magazine 1945

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping examples of classic illustration.



Archive supporter, Rich Borowy stopped by to digitize some classic Stan Freberg radio shows for the archive database yesterday. Under his arm was a box of old Coronet and Omnibook magazines. Rich said that he was given the box at a garage sale that was closing down. I've never looked at these particular magazines, but they have wonderful illustrations and features. Here are highlights from the December, 1945 issue. Check it out. There's a big surprise at the end. Thanks for bringing these in, Rich!

Each issue opens with an inspirational message and illustration. This one is by illustrator, Vera Bock. Many issues contain the work of Arthur Szyk, whose book The New Order we featured last year. I'll be doing a whole post of Szyk illustrations from Coronet soon.


Next up is a retelling of "The Night Before Christmas" by Golden Book illustrator, Sheilah Beckett. Will Finn recently posted about her book on Gilbert & Sullivan Operettas. These pages strongly resemble the back of Little Golden Books. Do you think Sheilah Beckett designed that?




Here's a feature on the artists who created the Famous Artists Course... Stevan Dohanos, along with his illustrator friends Albert Dorne, Ben Stahl, Hardie Gramatky, Fred Ludekens and Dean Cornwall donated their services to decorate casts in the Halloran Army Hospital in New York.



And here's a feature on exotic superstitions and religious beliefs by Stevan Dohanos...



Here's a real surprise- The autobiography of Bugs Bunny! "A Hare Grows In Manhattan"...









If you enjoyed this post, check out... Little Verses Part One, Part Two and Part Three, Baby's House, Arthur Szyk's The New Order and Artzybasheff's Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Illustration: Rojankovsky's Frog Went A-Courtin'

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 50s children's book illustrators.


Archive supporter, Kent Butterworth dropped by with a wonderful children's book by the great illustrator Feodor Rojankovsky. Titled, Frog Went A-Courtin', this book won the Caldicot Prize in 1955 for Best Children's Picture Book of the year.

Rojankovsky was born in Russia in 1891, and served in the Russian army in the first World War. He spent some time in France, then emigrated to the United States when war broke out again in 1940. He was a prolific illustrator, creating over 100 picture books for Western Publishing's Golden Books line and for other publishers as well. When asked how be began his interest in art, he replied...

Two great events determined the course of my childhood. l was taken to the zoo and saw the most marvelous creatures on earth: bears, tigers, monkeys and reindeer, and, while my admiration was running high, l was given a set of color crayons. Naturally, I began immediately to depict the animals which captured my imagination. Also when my eider brothers, who were in schools in the capital, came home for vacation, I tried to copy their drawings and to imitate their paintings.

Later when l went to school in Reval Tallinn, an ancient town on the shores of the Baltic sea, my love for art was enhanced and strengthened by a passion for nature. Tallinn was surrounded by forest. The sea presented wonderful opportunities for excursions and study of sea life. But there were also steamers, sailboats, flags, and all the excitement of a port. This was no less exciting than playing Red Indians or reading James Fenimore Cooper, the beloved author of all Russian children before, during, and after the Revolution.

SELECTED ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
FROG WENT A-COURTIN'
Make sure to click on these to see them large. Rojankovsky was a master of texture, and the smaller size images don't show that as well.















If you found this to be useful, see also... Tibor Gergely's A Day In The Jungle, Gustaf Tenggren's The Little Trapper, Uncle Remus Stories Part One and Part Two, Little Verses Part One, Part Two and The New Golden Song Book Part One, Part Two and Part Three, and Huckleberry Hound Builds A House.

If you like this book, you're in luck... it's still in print. You can find it at Amazon.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Media: More 50s and 60s Album Covers

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 50s children's book illustrators.



Here are some more great album covers from the colleciton of Archive volunteer, Eric Graf. Check out our Previous Post of album covers too.










For more LP art, see... 50s and 60s Album Covers

For more amazing illustration for kids, see our postings on Little Golden Books

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Illustration: Uncle Remus Stories Part Two

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 50s children's book illustrators.



Here are more scans from "Uncle Remus Stories", loaned to us by archive volunteer, Eric Graf. These wonderful illustrations are by Al Dempster and Bill Justice. For more images from this great Giant Golden Book, see... Uncle Remus Stories Part One

As always, if you'd like to see more of this book, let me know in the comments below.













If you found this to be useful, see also... Uncle Remus Stories Part One, Little Verses Part One, Part Two and The New Golden Song Book Part One, Part Two and Part Three, and Huckleberry Hound Builds A House.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Illustration: Uncle Remus Stories 1949

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 50s children's book illustrators.


On Saturday archive volunteer, Eric Graf brought by another treasure for us to digitize... a 1949 edition of the Disney Giant Golden Book, "Uncle Remus Stories". It features a spectacular cover by Mary Blair and many beautiful interior illustrations by Al Dempster and Bill Justice.

This book is interesting, not just for its relationship to the rarely seen Disney film, Song of the South, but for the material that doesn't appear in the film. Along with the familiar stories about the Tar Baby and Brer Rabbit's Laffin' Place, the book illustrates a dozen other stories like "De Great Rabbit Terrapin Race", "Brer Fox and de Stolen Goobers" and "Why de Cricket Fambly Lives in Chimbleys".
































If you found this to be useful, see also... Little Verses Part One, Part Two and The New Golden Song Book Part One , Part Two and Part Three, and Huckleberry Hound Builds A House.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

11.24.08
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Mary Blair Song Book Part Two

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 50s children's book illustrators.



Today, we continue digitizing Mary Blair's "New Golden Song Book" from 1955. If you missed the first part of this book, see Mary Blair Song Book Part One and Part Three.














If you would like to see more from this beautiful book, please let me know in the comments below.

If you missed the posting of the first part of this book, see Mary Blair Song Book Part One and Part Three.

For more beautiful illustrations by Mary Blair, see... Little Verses Part One, Part Two, and Baby's House.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Media Mary Blair Song Book Part One

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 50s children's book illustrators.



Mary Blair is one of the most popular illustrators/color stylists among today's animation designers. This book was published in 1955, and it's a great example of Blair at the height of her powers. The full color illustrations are great, but check out the duotones and the page layouts... It's as if she can do no wrong! Her taste is impeccable. Check out the links at the bottom of this post for more beautiful images by Mary Blair.




































For more beautiful illustrations by Mary Blair, see... Little Verses Part One, Part Two, and Baby's House.

If you would like to see more from this book, let me know in the comments below...

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

11.08.08
.

Stumble It!

Media: Mary Blair's Baby's House

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 Golden Book illustrators.


Earlier, we featured Mary Blair's Golden Book "Little Verses" in two postings ( Part One / Part Two ). Today, we feature her long out-of-print book, "Baby's House".

I'm always interested in the observations of artists regarding the work I post, so I asked Clarke Snyder of Inspiration Grab Bag to put together a few lines to introduce this gallery of images. Here is what he had to say...

"Baby's House" is heavily infused with Mary Blair's signature blend of charm, appeal and delightful child-like spirit that has made her an inspirational icon to artists, designers, and animators. In this book however, she seems to forgo her typical pattern-heavy, decorative approach with its strong and dream-like colors for a much more subdued and natural palette. The combination of bold simplistic shapes, subtle color harmonies and minimal decoration evoke a feeling of comfort and familairity that one would expect to find in a typical home full of commonplace fixtures and objects.

Blair doesn't deviate too far from her norm though... This book is obviously loaded with her lush, well placed brushwork-- whether in a bold textured stroke or a delicate detail. I absolutely love the one image of the baby wrapped up in the towel after the bath. It's brimming with such beautiful simplicity. The depth she creates with negative space amazes me, and the bold use of texture to form creates that familiar feeling of a nice clean fluffy towel after a bath or shower.

Blair's appealing sense of design and compostion also figure prominently throughout each and every page of this book. The Baby seems to bounce around and jump all over the pages, full of life and movement-- so much so that you might swear that the playful tyke was actually animated.

It's no wonder that Mary Blair continues to be such an influential and revered artist amongst so many of todays top artists. --Clarke Snyder




















Many thanks to Mike Fontanelli, who loaned us his Giant Golden Book copy of this book to digitize.

For more beautiful artwork by Mary Blair, see... Little Verses Part One, Part Two and The New Golden Song Book Part One , Part Two and Part Three.

See also... Bozo and his Rocket Ship, Rojankovsky's Frog Went A Courting, Tibor Gergely's A Day In The Jungle, Gustaf Tenggren's The Little Trapper, Uncle Remus Stories Part One and Part Two, and Huckleberry Hound Builds A House.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

6.13.08
.

Stumble It!

Media: Mary Blair's Little Verses Part One

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive is packed with great stuff like this... Bookmark Our Homepage!


Mary Blair has become well known in the past few years for her concept work on Disney's classic animated features of the forties and fifties, but two of her masterpieces remain unavailable for viewing... one is the set of murals she designed at the entrance to Tomorrowland in Disneyland, which were covered up several years ago by a plastic wall covering that was supposed to look futuristic... and the other masterpiece is her Golden Book titled, "Little Verses", which has been out of print for over 40 years.

Originally serialized in the children's magazine, "Highlights" in the early fifties, these paintings were issued as an oversized Golden Book in the early 60s. This particular Golden Book is one of the most sought after titles by collectors. Rita Street was kind enough to loan a copy to be be digitized for the Archive's image database. I've done a little Photoshopping to remove the text, so you can see the paintings unobstructed.

Here are a few scans from this beautiful book...




Click to see larger

Click to see larger






Click to see larger




Click to see larger

Click to see larger

Click to see larger

Click to see larger

Click to see larger
For more by Mary Blair, see... Mary Blair Song Book Part One, Part Two and Part Three; as well as Baby's House.

See also... Bozo and his Rocket Ship, Rojankovsky's Frog Went A Courting, Tibor Gergely's A Day In The Jungle, Gustaf Tenggren's The Little Trapper, Uncle Remus Stories Part One and Part Two, The New Golden Song Book Part One, Part Two and Part Three, and Huckleberry Hound Builds A House.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

5.27.08
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Gustaf Tenggren's Little Trapper

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 Golden Book illustrators.


Gustaf Tenggren was born in Sweden in 1896. Throughout the 1920s, he illustrated children's books and fairy tales in a richly detailed style similar to Arthur Rackham and Kay Nielsen. In 1936, Walt Disney brought Tenggren to Hollywood to work on Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs. His designs for the Dwarfs' cottage and the forest were directly incorporated into the film by the layout artists.

The experience of working at Disney changed Tenggren's artistic outlook. He abandoned the European illustrator style for a simpler, more direct, stylized approach. Beginning in 1942, he illustrated the most iconic Golden Books... The Poky Little Puppy, The Saggy Baggy Elephant, The Shy Little Kitten and The Tawny Scrawny Lion, and he continued to paint for Western Publishing until his death in the early sixties.

Tenggren's Golden Books are exemplified by bold, clear compositions; a harmonious use of color and masterful rendering of a variety of textures. This book, The Little Trapper, is one of Tenggren's least often seen titles. Published in 1950, several years before DIsney's Davy Crockett popularized the coonskin cap, this book includes some disarmingly beautiful paintings.











For more incredible illustration by Gustaf Tenggren, see Gustaf Tenggren's Tell It Again Book, The Genesis of the Golden Book StyleD'Aulnoy Fairy Tales and The Good Dog Book, Tenggren's Grimms Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Heidi, Wonderbook and Juan & Juanita, Sing For Christmas, and Small Fry and the Winged Horse.

See also... Einar Norelius' Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1929 and 1934, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1917, More Norelius and Bauer, Arthur Rackham's Grimm's Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Kay Nielsen's East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Hansel & Gretel, Dulac's H.C. Andersen Part One and Part Two.

Stephen Worth
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

5.12.08
.

Stumble It!