LEONARD MALTIN IN FOCUS – Indelible Images –
1996
What do the movies Mary Poppins, 20,000 Leagues
Under the Sea, Treasure Island, Davy Crockett, King
of the Wild Frontier, and The Black Hole
have in common? Yes, they’re all Walt Disney productions,
but there’s an even stronger link: they all feature
the magical matte paintings of master artist Peter Ellenshaw.
There is no island for Captain Nemo to sail to in
20,000 Leagues. There was no 19th
century Washington, D.C. for Davy Crockett to admire
in his self-named film. And there was no London for
Mary Poppins to sail over with her umbrella, until Ellenshaw
painted those images on glass and positioned them in
front of a motion picture camera.
Poppins, in fact, may be his masterpiece.
Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke and company never set
foot outside a soundstage in Burbank, California. Ellenshaw
painted 102 separate mattes for that film to give it
the rich atmosphere of Edwardian London.
Today, Ellenshaw is retired from films, but he’s far
from idle. Every year, the prestigious Hammer Galleries
on 57th Street in Manhattan present a showing
of his latest paintings, and now, the 83 year old artist
is celebrated in a beautifully printed volume called
The Garden Within: The Art of Peter Ellenshaw published
by Mill Pond Press [now out of print–
although another collection is in the works]. (As
a longtime fan, I was honored to be asked to contribute
an afterword to the book. The foreword was written
by Diane Disney Miller, Walt’s daughter, who like me
became acquainted with Peter through his movie work
and went on to be dazzled by his fine art.)
I first learned about this unsung special effects
genius when I was researching my book The Disney
Films in the early 1970s. Director Ken Annakin,
who piloted such live-action Disney films as The
Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men, Third
Man on the Mountain, and Swiss Family
Robinson, sang Peter’s praises to me and helped
me to understand for the first time the extent of his
contribution to the studio’s output. Remember, this
was long before computer-generated effects were available.
When a filmmaker wanted to establish a period setting
and couldn’t afford to build a set as far as the eye
could see, it was time to call in a matte artist to
literally paint the picture in such a convincing way
that it would blend with live-action and fool the eye.
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| Peter
at work in his Santa Barbara studio |
Even for Third Man on the Mountain, which was
filmed on location in Switzerland, it was felt that Ellenshaw’s
paintings could provide better point-of-view shots in
some cases than the actual camera, which had to contend
with such nuisances as clouds, shadows, and poorly-placed
ledges. Ellenshaw, who studied under Walter Percy Day,
a visual effects pioneer in British films, soon surpassed
his mentor and became a peerless purveyor of this unique
art form. (He in turn passed on much of his knowledge
to Albert Whitlock, the other great name in contemporary
matte work.)
When I first saw some of his glass paintings I must
confess I was disappointed. They didn’t seem real at
all. Then Ellenshaw instructed me to stand further
back, and sure enough, as I approached the proper “focal
length,” the once-hazy renderings seemed more and more
like real life. This was the unique challenge of a
matte painter, to understand that his work was not going
to be seen by the naked eye, but by the camera eye instead.
Mastering that perspective was the key to success
in this field. Ellenshaw’s teacher, “Pop” Day, told
him not to stand too close to the painting when he was
working. “As a young student, I could not understand
this,” Ellenshaw has said, “thinking the closer I got,
the better control I had. Now it is obvious to me.
Control comes from knowledge, not from the hand. Today
I spend more time looking and thinking than actually
painting.”
I had the great pleasure of visiting Peter’s airy
California studio earlier this year, and watched him
as he worked on one of his beloved Irish landscape scenes.
He prefers acrylics to oil nowadays, and works with
an ease that only comes from years of experience. Yet
he approaches each new canvas as a challenge. He showed
me and my family a beautiful seascape that was troubling
him. It looked fine to us—his mastery of water on canvas
is staggering—but he felt the composition was all wrong.
Sure enough, when we saw the finished piece at Hammer
this past December he’d painted over the “trouble” spots
and made it better.
Ellenshaw loves painting gardens, mountains, and the
sea. It would be tempting to call his work photorealism,
but that would be doing it a disservice. He doesn’t
reproduce what he sees; he improves upon it. That was
a hallmark of Walt Disney’s work, and it characterizes
Peter Ellenshaw’s, as well.
Incidentally, if the name seems somehow familiar in
another context, you may recall seeing a P.S. Ellenshaw
credited for the terrific matte paintings in Star
Wars. He is better known in both special effects
and fine arts circles today as Harrison Ellenshaw, and
he is yet another Ellenshaw protégé---Peter’s son.
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