DALLAS, TX.- Over four days and more than 1,500 lots, both the legacy and astonishing vision of Walt Disney proved themselves many times over during this 100-year anniversary of the Walt Disney Company.
Heritage Auctions' Celebrating 100 Years Of Disney: 1923–2023 took place June 23-26 and resulted in an overall record-setting animation art auction that brought $4,874,435 with a 100% sell-through rate. It was the most successful Animation Art auction ever held, topping Heritage's August 2021 $4.5 million event; Heritage now has held all five of the five largest Animation Art auctions ever.
It was a thrilling four days as significant works from Walt's favorite animators and artists shattered their estimates, with record prices realized for historic Disney Studio MVPs Mary Blair, Eyvind Earle, Peter Ellenshaw and Steamboat Willie's Ub Iwerks. The remarkable animation that springs from Disney's production studios is the company's crowning glory, and the generous and wide-ranging auction spanned Disney's entire animation history and included production cels, animation drawings, concept art, storyboards, Disney book art and Disney fine art.
"It is so satisfying to see this great art form leap to new heights," says Jim Lentz, Heritage's Vice President of Animation and Anime Art. "Seeing such strong sales from Disney's Golden Age right through to the Disney Renaissance makes this 100 Years of Disney landmark auction so rewarding."
Indeed the June event walked Disney collectors, connoisseurs and fans from 1928's Steamboat Willie, through its Golden Age shaped by iconic features like Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, and into its astoundingly resonant Renaissance era with gems like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. Heritage in fact featured the largest single collection of original animation and fine art from Disney's 1950 film Cinderella.
On that enchanted note, the highest-priced lot of the event and a record breaker for a Disney artist goes to Mary Blair, the artist, animator and designer who worked for the company for nearly two decades starting in the 1940s. Blair is a perennial favorite of collectors, and so it's no surprise that Heritage has set a new auction record for Blair with her 1950 concept painting for Cinderella featuring the would-be princess waving goodbye to her Fairy Godmother as she speeds off to the ball in a transformed coach. The hammer came down at $90,000. (Heritage sold a Blair concept painting for It's a Small World for $72,000 in 2021 and a Blair production cel from Alice in Wonderland for $78,000 in 2014.) For this anniversary event, Blair's work in fact holds six of the top ten lots sold. Blair's concept/color key painting from Cinderella of the Duke and princess in a glass-slipper moment sold for $57,600, and her concept painting from Alice in Wonderland (featuring some lyrical mushrooms swaying in the moonlight) sold for $48,000. Her three other artworks amongst the top sellers include two others from Alice (concept painting, $43,200) and Cinderella (color/key painting, $38,400), and also Blair's concept painting from Peter Pan of a swordfight between Peter and Captain Hook, which sold for $38,400. The highest auction price paid for another Disney art star, Eyvind Earle, was the second highest-grossing artwork in the auction: Earle's 1959 concept painting for Sleeping Beauty depicting Aurora deep in slumber brought $66,000. Another auction top ten for Earle was his Sleeping Beauty concept painting of Prince Phillip, Samson, and Maleficent as a dragon ("Now shall you deal with me, O Prince. And all the powers of hell!"); it sold for $43,200.
Disney followers know that, released in black and white in 1928, is one of the first cartoons with synchronized sound and the first glimpse wider audiences got of Mickey Mouse. It is a classic not only of the Disney canon but all of animation art and the history of cinema. Directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, it was animated by Iwerks and this Heritage anniversary auction landed the artist a record: his Steamboat Willie animation drawing acts as a perfect and ultra-charming portrait of our most-famous Mouse, smiling and at the ready, in his earliest incarnation. It sold for $24,000.
Legendary artist Peter Ellenshaw saw an auction record in this event for his Disney work with his 1954 concept painting for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Acrylic on board and painted only a year after Ellenshaw moved to the States from his home in London, it depicts Captain Nemo's Nautilus submarine near the island of Vulcania. It sold for $21,600.
Other notable and top lots in the auction include a pan-sized cel of Maleficent as a dragon in Sleeping Beauty, attributed to top Disney artists, which sold for $45,600; and a set of preliminary roughs and storyboard drawings from Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974) by artist Ted Berman, which sold for $38,400. This tumble of extraordinary drawings depicts the rambunctious Tigger, in his riled-up bouncing glory, as he grapples with an adventure in tree climbing. "Well, Tigger, your bouncing really got you into trouble this time!"
