Duck Paintings (Alte meister)

[Armando Botto]

Daniel, Timo:
>> In private email someone asked me about the (non-Barks) Duck paintings
which have the style of Breughel and Whistler, etc.
Are pictures of these paintings available on internet? Are they mentioned in
the I.N.D.U.C.K.S. database?
> You must mean this:
http://www.oceanbunny.de/privat/duck/duck.htm

List member Luca Boschi wrote a very interesting essay about this subject
(published as the final chapter of the "Walt Disney presenta Paperina e le
altre" book, in 1994). I guess he won't mind if I give a very short summary
of the essay here:

During the production of the 1941 Disney movie "The Reluctant Dragon", a gag
was devised about a "Portrait of Madonna Duck". Disney animators liked the
idea a lot, and decided - just for the fun of it - to paint a series of
"classical" portraits. Seventeen portraits were produced, and later
published in the April 16th, 1945 issue of Life magazine.
Almost 50 years later, a similar effort was undertaken by Professor Eckhart
Bauer of the Fine Arts School of Brunswick, Germany. Prof. Bauer and his
students produced a few paintings and sculptures, which were assembled in
the "Duckomenta" exhibition (first shown in Grenoble in 1990). The paintings
were inspired to Van Gogh, Degas, Manet, and Toulouse-Lautrec (among
others), while one of the sculptures represented the famous Egyptian queen
Duckfertiti...

I can add that another similar project has been described in issue #8 of "I
Maestri Disney", devoted to G.B. Carpi. In 1997, the late Maestro taught a
course of "Pictorial Research", and his seven students painted a picture
each, re-inventing a few classics (Rembrandt, Klimt, Canova, Holbein,
Caravaggio, Bruegel, and Van Eyck) with Disney characters.

Ciao,
Armando