another great artist who passed away without me noticing...

[acroyear]

If you've ever looked at the rooftops of London in Mary Poppins, the infinite sea of 20,000 Leagues, or the huge Cygnus spaceship interior of The Black Hole, you've seen the marvelous work of Oscar winner (Mary Poppins) and Disney Legend Peter Ellenshaw.  Ellenshaw painted the glass matte paintings that back before blue screen and digital mixing (and looking far better than many bluescreen-based works at the time) allowed the actors to visit worlds that could never have been shown on film before.

In just surfing around, I found out on IMDB that he passed away in February of this year.  I'll let Jim Hill say more...

Jim Hill : Remembering Peter Ellenshaw : 1913 - 2007:

We lost one of Hollywood's true visual effects wizards yesterday.

By that I mean: Peter Ellenshaw could do what only a handful of artists could do. Which is take a piece of glass & a few tubes of paint. And then he'd create these impossible places & things. A long-forgotten Viking colony that was hidden high up in the Arctic. A leprechaun's throne room that was piled high with gold. A secret seabase that had been built inside the caldera of a long-dormant volcano. This elegant long spacecraft that was parked at the edge of an immense black hole.

All of these places exist in Disney films because Peter Ellenshaw was an absolute master of matte painting. He could take these rough bits of film that Walt or Bill Walsh or Robert Stevenson would hand him and then -- with just a few flicks of a brush -- extend a half-built set. Or make a miniature seem downright enormous. That way, Mary Poppins would then have a proper looking English park to take Jane & Michael Banks to. Or Eglantine Price would then have a properly moody English moor on which to battle Nazis.

So much of the magic that we took for granted in those Walt Disney Productions of the 1950s, 1960s & 1970s was a direct result of Ellenshaw's talent & artistry. His ability to take those blank bits of screen and make them seem real. Which is why we believed that Jim Douglas & Tennessee Steinmetz actually did live in an old San Francisco firehouse with Herbie the Love Bug. Or that Jim Hawkins & Long John Silver really did drop anchor at Treasure Island.