Watch Out! There Are Painters About! The Funny Folk of Disneyland Paint a House
London: IPC Magazines Ltd, 1977. Item #04145
“Watch Out! There Are Painters About!”
Mickey, Minnie, Pooh, Baloo, Merlin, Robin Hood and the Funny Folk of Disneyland Paint a House
Original Walt Disney Artwork for Disney Time No. 8
WALT DISNEY STUDIOS. Watch Out! There Are Painters About! The Funny Folk of Disneyland Paint a House. Original hand-painted artwork for the double-page center spread of Walt Disney's Disney Time, No. 8. [London: IPC Magazines Ltd.], March 19, 1977.
Original gouache on artist's board. Image size 9 1/2 x 16 3/4 inches (241 x 425 mm.). In fine condition. Matted, framed and glazed.
Together with a copy of Walt Disney's Disney Time, No. 8, dated March 19, 1977, in which the present artwork appeared as the double-page center spread.
A superb and extraordinarily elaborate piece of original Walt Disney publication artwork, assembling a remarkable cast of Disney characters for what must surely be one of the most chaotic house-painting expeditions ever attempted.
The premise is wonderfully simple: the “funny folk of Disneyland” have decided to help a friend by painting his house. Armed with brushes, ladders, buckets and innumerable pots of brilliantly colored paint, they descend upon the property en masse. Their enthusiasm considerably exceeds their competence. The resulting panoramic composition is a tour de force of comic incident.
At the center, Merlin, from The Sword in the Stone, floats effortlessly outside an upstairs window, directing a collection of magically animated paintbrushes which are apparently doing considerably more useful work than most of his companions. Nearby, other characters balance precariously upon ladders, lean from windows and crawl across the bright red roof.
Above them, Mickey Mouse's nephews Morty and Ferdie have climbed onto the rooftop, while Goofy bends over his work with predictable results. Rabbit, attempting to paint the chimney pots, receives a face full of black soot.
At ground level the confusion becomes even more spectacular. Mowgli appears at a window beside Winnie-the-Pooh, while Baloo applies paint nearby. Kaa, the python from The Jungle Book, has been spectacularly flattened after being run over by Bongo on his unicycle.
Characters from Robin Hood occupy much of the right-hand side. Prince John, seated upon his throne, has somehow become involved in the proceedings; Robin Hood and other inhabitants of Sherwood Forest join the painting party, while buckets, brushes and paint seem to travel in every conceivable direction. At lower right Minnie Mouse, carrying what appears to be a set of plans or instructions, surveys another miniature disaster, while Pluto is characteristically occupied digging furiously into the ground.
The original magazine text gleefully describes the scene: “What a-splishing and a-splashing and a-sploshing of paint there was.”
Rabbit's encounter with the chimney smoke, Kaa's unfortunate flattening and Morty and Ferdie's expedition to the roof are all singled out before the text concludes that, somehow, the house was eventually painted - “although it was mainly thanks to Merlin the magician and his marvellous magic paint brushes!”
As with the other Disney Time center spreads, the artwork incorporates a hidden-object puzzle. Readers were challenged to locate two brushes, a paint pot, two slippers, two hats and a pipe concealed within the already astonishingly crowded composition.
The illustration appeared as the double-page center spread of Walt Disney's Disney Time, No. 8, dated March 19, 1977. The magazine was a British weekly published by IPC, beginning on January 29, 1977 and ending after only twenty-one issues on June 18 of that year. The title was then merged with Mickey Mouse in Disneyland.
The brevity of the series makes the survival of these original center-spread paintings particularly interesting. The finished magazines themselves were inexpensive weekly publications; contemporary collecting references nevertheless note their unusually strong color and high production values. The original gouaches reveal how much more detailed and brilliantly colored the artwork was before reduction and reproduction.
The present sheet is especially impressive. Although measuring only 16 3/4 inches across, the artist has incorporated dozens of figures and individual incidents without allowing the composition to become visually incoherent. The white house and brilliant red roof form the architectural center, while the surrounding greens and vivid pools of yellow, blue and red lead the eye continuously around the scene.
The accompanying copy of Disney Time No. 8 provides the essential publication context and permits the original artwork to be compared directly with its finished appearance in the magazine.
An outstanding piece of original Disney publication artwork - brilliantly colored, densely populated with classic characters, and filled from corner to corner with visual jokes, mishaps and hidden objects.
Price: $3,000.00