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Angel's Flight
Angel's Flight
Angel's Flight

Angel's Flight

Artist (1908 - 1981)
Date1945
MediumWatercolor on paper
Dimensions18 x 24 in. (45.7 x 61 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LinePurchased with Acquisition Funds
Object number2022.196
DescriptionCarlos Daniel Manriquez was born in Mexico on April 10, 1908, and would eventually move to Los Angeles. His family’s lore recounts that 20-year-old Manriquez was sitting in a park one day, doodling some sketches, when he became aware of a man watching him drawing. Manriquez had just finished up and was packing his pencils and sketchpad when the man asked him if he wanted a job.

The man was Walt Disney – and soon thereafter, Manriquez joined the Walt Disney Studio as its first full-time background painter. He was by most accounts also the first artist of Mexican descent at Disney, beginning work there in 1929 and leaving the studio in 1938.

The Disney background department eventually expanded to include Emil Flohri, and remained a two-man enterprise until 1931, when a third artist, Mique Nelson, joined the team. They were responsible for creating the scenic backgrounds upon which hand-painted cels were placed and photographed. Their projects included Disney’s popular “Silly Symphonies” series of animated shorts, as well as many of the studio’s Mickey Mouse shorts.

While he worked in the animation industry, like many other Los Angeles artists, Manriquez painted everyday life around him in his spare time – a Regionalist style that would later come to be known as the “California Scene” genre.

After leaving Disney, Manriquez worked for Warner Bros animation, where he continued to paint backgrounds for cartoon shorts. He later moved to Mexico City, where he worked on “Rocky and Bullwinkle” at Val-Mar Productions. Manriquez later started his own studio in Mexico. He passed away on May 1,1981, at age 73.

This painting is a watercolor depicting Angels Flight, downtown L.A.’s famous narrow-gauge funicular that opened in 1901 and still ferries passengers up and down Bunker Hill. The painting was probably created while Manriquez was working at Disney – but painted during his own personal time (many California Scene painters worked at the motion-picture studios to make a living, and painted scenes of California life on their own time, on weekends and holidays).

The hillside railway, still a tourist attraction today, was a popular subject for many well-known California Scene painters, including Ralph Hulett and Ben Abril. Manriquez gives the scene a whimsical touch and portrays Angel’s Flight as it was in the ‘40s, in its original location next to the Third Street tunnel. The funicular was later moved and opened in its current location, across from the Grand Central Market, in 1996.
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