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(Walt Disney Studios, 1944) Original concept drawing of the Duchess and her baby by esteemed Disney artist David Hall, which he originally created when working on Alice in Wonderland in the late 1930s and early 1940s, roughly a decade before the final film version was released. Many of Hall?s early drawings were published in the Alice?s Adventures in Wonderland chapter of the Giant Golden Book, Walt Disney's Surprise Package, which was published by Simon and Schuster of New York in 1944, and pictured this very drawing on page 53. The anthology book contained a dozen illustrated stories adapted from classic tales by figures like Hans Christian Andersen, Joel Chandler Harris, James M. Barrie, Serge Prokofieff, and Lewis Carroll. Accomplished in graphite on untrimmed 8 x 6 artist paper, the drawing depicts the Duchess, shown in a state of frustration, seated in a chair and nursing her very distraught baby. The drawing is affixed to a 12 x 9 cardstock sheet and matted to an overall size of 20 x 16. In fine condition. Accompanied by a third printing of the Walt Disney's Surprise Package book.
In Didier Ghez's great book They Drew As They Pleased: The Hidden Art of Disney's Musical Years (The 1940s: Part One), he writes: ?(David) Hall joined Disney's story department on March 1, 1939, and immediately started working on Alice in Wonderland. In his few months at Disney, Hall drew more than four hundred pieces of story art to present his vision for Alice in Wonderland. His creations were elaborate, highly rendered, and rather close to the look of the book's original drawings by John Tenniel.? Mr. Hall's work on this project was presented to the public in the Giant Golden Book Walt Disney's Surprise Package. Hall?s work, commissioned for Walt Disney in 1939 but only used for the book and not for the film version, lay in the Disney Archives until the mid-1970s, when the inspirational sketches, as they were called, were rediscovered while material was being selected for a touring exhibition of Disney artwork.
