DALLAS, TX.- Heigh-ho! Our collective love affair with Disney’s rich history continues: From December 8-11, Heritage presented Part II of its celebration of Disney’s centennial with an auction that brought in $3.3 million; this followed the auction house’s Part I summer event that brought in a record $4.8 million for a combined, whopping $8.1 million for the art of Disney animation in 2023. No other auction house comes close to this level of success in this special category. The December spectacular — Celebrating 100 Years of Disney! (1923 - 2023) PART II Signature ® Auction — featuring nearly 1700 lots, was a complete sellout.

“Part II of this amazing auction celebrating 100 years of Disney continued the record-breaking results we saw this past June,” says Jim Lentz, Heritage's Vice President of Animation and Anime Art. “The market responded to this Disney anniversary auction in record fashion.”

Works ranged from the earliest of Disney's Golden Age to of course its resonant Renaissance era: The top sellers in the event included animation cels, original concept art and prototype works from Snow White and Pinocchio to Scrooge McDuck and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Every generation of Disney fan could find favorite moments in an event that spanned four days. Leading the event was a treasure from Walt Disney's 1937 masterpiece Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: A staggering hand-inked, hand-painted production cel featuring all seven dwarfs in their famous “Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to work we go!” scene brought $69,000. The cel included its Samuel Armstrong hand-painted Key Master production background. Sharing that Golden Age spirit, a 1940 Gustaf Tenggren concept painting from Disney's second animated feature film Pinocchio sold for $48,000. This gorgeous survivor came with a remarkable provenance: During Disney's move from the old Hyperion studios to the new facilities in Burbank, Disney story man Eric Gurney rescued it when he noticed it being swept up and destined for the trash.

No Disney animation event is complete without the strong presence of Golden Age studio and fan favorite artist Mary Blair. Blair’s work represented five of the top ten sellers in the auction, most notably an astonishing Walt Disney-commissioned mural by Blair that she created during the making of The Three Caballeros as a gift to the actress Carmen Miranda, who had served as a goodwill ambassador on behalf of Disney during a diplomatic excursion through South America. The mural sold for $43,200. The well-documented painting, which hung in Miranda’s home, was considered lost and through Heritage came to market for the first time directly from the personal collection of Pocahontas director Mike Gabriel, who discovered and rescued this painting from a small tourist art shop in California where its history and provenance were entirely forgotten. Other Blair top-ten sellers of the event included her 1951 Alice in Wonderland (Alice Down the Rabbit Hole) gouache concept painting, which brought $40,800, and her 1950 Cinderella original concept art/color key gouache featuring Cinderella's castle under the soft glow of a full moon, which sold for $21,600. Blair’s hold on Disney collectors is as seemingly timeless as Walt Disney himself. (On that note, a 1941 Walt Disney-signed letter to stockholders on Fantasia letterhead sold for $20,400.)

The second highest-selling lot in the event, at $66,000, was an extremely rare bronze Scrooge McDuck prototype sculpture “This Dollar Saved My Life at Whitehorse” based on a painting by Disney mainstay Carl Barks and sculpted by Allyson Vought. The exploratory work was developed for possible editioned retail output. It featured Scrooge McDuck sitting on a pile of coins and gems from his Money Bin; he’s holding an authentic Eisenhower silver dollar dated 1976. Barks was represented in another two of the top ten lots with his 1960 “Want to Buy an Island?” twice-signed title page original art from Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, which sold for $38,400, and his “Sport of Tycoons”Scrooge McDuck porcelain and bronze statue co-created with Vought, which sold for $22,200.

And for fans of the truly unique 1988 comedy Who Framed Roger Rabbit, here’s a fun result: A production cel featuring a hapless Roger roped to his bodacious wife Jessica Rabbit sold for $13,200. The scene takes place during the movie’s climax (“Oh Roger, you were magnificent!”) and is one of the best cels from the production Heritage has seen. It seems collectors agree.

Says Lentz, “This sale completes a record-breaking and amazing year of results for Heritage Auctions’ Animation Art category with sales coming in over $14 million in 2023!”