Wallace Collection: Inspiring Walt Disney

Earlier this month I booked tickets to see the new Inspiring Walt Disney exhibition at the Wallace Collection in London. This is about how French design inspired Walt Disney in his films especially Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. The exhibition is located on the bottom floor of the building, and you can either pre book your slot or pay when you get there. There is also an optional digital tour guide and head set for free, which I did pick up but struggled with the headphones so ended up listening to bits I wanted to as opposed to the whole exhibition. I would recommend picking up one if you have time and you are really interested in the animation side, as they speak to the animators at Disney and how they produced the various ideas for the films.

The exhibition starts with a quote from Walt Disney on the wall. It then goes into how Walt visited Europe for holidays and to gather visual references for his films. There was a black and white film of Walt and his family on holiday in Paris which was amazing to see. It then explains how various French architecture such as the House of Mirrors and the Palace of Versailles influenced him in his films. He also accumulated a vast collection of fairy tales from throughout Europe, again inspiring the films in which he made. Next, we have various porcelain statues and a variety of drawings, highlighting how Walt used animated porcelain figurines in his early series of Silly Symphonies, especially The Clock Store and The China Shop.

The next part of the exhibition was all about Cinderella (1950) and displayed Mary Blair concept art which were incredible to see. Mary Blair is one of the most famous animators for the Walt Disney company, working for them for over 30 years and creating the dreamy concept art and colour style that bought fairy tales to life such as Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland. On the main wall in this section of the exhibition was the drawings that make up the iconic dress change scene in the film. A total of twenty-four drawings made up this scene which lasts on seconds in the film, next to the drawings was a small film reel showing how it looks all put together. Cinderella is one of my favourites and it was amazing to see these drawings. You can purchase some of the Mary Blair art in the gift shop of the Wallace Collection.

You then start moving towards the inspirations behind the ideas for Beauty and the Beast. Before we get straight into that inspiration, we are shown what inspired the castles in both Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. The Palace of Versailles was one of the main castles that was used as a visual reference as were other French buildings and castles. Also shown, is how two pairs of Sevres vases were used as visual references for the turrets of the Beast’s castle. When entering the Beauty and the Beast section of the exhibition the score is played softly through speakers, you have the music of the Prologue, Beauty and the Beast and the Transformation. I thought this was a lovely addition to the exhibition because the music in this film is one of the highlights. In the Beauty and the Beast section they also cover animating the dance sequence which is a good section to listen to on the headset as the animators explain how they animated the sequence whilst the sequence is playing on a small screen. Similarly, there is a section that covers how the Beast’s transformation scene was animated, again listen to this on the headset because the animators talk about how they produced how the Beast looked and how they wanted the transformation scene to work. Again, the scene is playing on a small screen whilst you can listen on the guide. After, there is another section all about how they animated inanimate objects and produced the characters of Lumiere, Mrs Potts, Chip and Cogsworth. There are amazing sketches of how these characters became how we know them to be. There were sketches from other Disney films such as carpet from Aladdin.

The last part of the exhibition included is the Swing painting by Jean- Honore Fragonard. It highlights how the discovery of this painting was during Disney’s Renaissance period in the early nineties and how the painting was used as visual reference before finally appearing in Disney’s Frozen in 2013.

Overall, I really enjoyed this exhibition and if you love your Disney history and Disney animation this is the one for you. I really liked learning about the details that went into the films and where the inspiration came from. It’s amazing to see Disney history on display over here in the UK and I really hope this means we might get more exhibitions like this. You can spend as much or as little time as you want around this and as I said earlier there is the free optional tour guide. Additionally, check out the section in the gift shop for this exhibition after your visit. The exhibition is on at the Wallace Collection in London until 16^th October and is £14 a ticket.

Book your tickets here: Tickets

Until next time

Stacey