Three Noble Horses
Date1993
MediumOil and lacquer on board
Dimensions48 x 48 in. (121.9 x 121.9 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LineGift of the Earle Family Trust
Object number2017.026
DescriptionA prolific, inexhaustible artist, Eyvind Earle worked in many media and continually produced fine art throughout his career. His signature landscapes and portraiture, marked by strong verticals and jewel-tone colors, proliferated in paintings, drawings, sculptures, linoleum blocks and scratchboards during his fine-art career. This brilliant, stylized portrayal of horses, with its colors seemingly magnified by Earle’s trademark clear lacquer finish, is probably influenced by his time spent living and traveling in the American Southwest, as they bear similarities to contemporary Navajo horse paintings. Earle is probably best known to most people, however, as a Disney artist. Although he worked on Disney’s Peter Pan (1953) and Lady and the Tramp (1955), Earle truly left his mark as the lead visual artist for 1959’s Sleeping Beauty, still considered to be the most lavishly designed of all Disney animated features. Today, Earle’s art is widely collected, including by such celebrities as directors Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson – and he was posthumously named a Disney Legend in 2015.
The poem below is by Earle, who was an enthusiastic poet and published a volume of his works, The Poetry of Eyvind Earle (1997):
Three noble horses, black and red and white
The three together a majestic sight
Untamed and clean, roaming the valleys wild
Unafraid and guileless like a child
On View
Not on view
1993
