Sleeping Beauty (section)

Eyvind Earle painted this scene as a background for Disney's Sleeping Beauty, released in 1959, and his fingerprints are all over its crisp, storybook style. Every tree here is a perfect ball of green, the rocks jut out at sharp angles, and the whole landscape feels less like nature and more like a beautifully arranged pattern. Far off on its hilltop stands the blue castle, home to Princess Aurora, glowing against a clear sky. As the film's color stylist and background designer, Earle gave the movie a flat, decorative look that broke sharply from the soft, rounded style of earlier Disney films.

Old European art shaped much of what you see. Earle borrowed from Gothic and Renaissance paintings and from the fine detail of medieval illuminated manuscripts, which explains the loving attention paid to each leaf, flower, and tuft of grass. His method was slow and demanding, so much so that it held up production on the film, but the payoff was a story that still looks like a painting come to life.

Earle stayed at Disney only a short while before turning to his own fine art and prints, where he kept making these clean, dreamlike scenes. This particular view feels calm and unhurried, a peaceful corner of a fairy tale waiting for its story to begin.