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- Like many great modernists, including Georgia O’Keeffe and Henri Matisse, she experimented with simple lines and contrasting color combinations, applying unmixed paint directly onto the paper in blocks of unusually paired and intense shades.
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Dec 16, 2023 · From the very start of her career, Mary Blair wanted to be a painter and illustrator, rather than a concept artist within an animation studio. However, working with Disney, she created a unique position for herself, from which she could combine fine art, illustration, and storytelling.
- Overview
- Early life and career
- Trip to Latin America and return to Disney Studios
- Illustrations for Golden Books
- it’s a small world
- Later life, awards, and exhibitions
Mary Blair, (born October 21, 1911, McAlester, Oklahoma, U.S.—died July 26, 1978, Soquel, California), American artist, art director, and designer known for her colourful and modern illustrations that helped define the visual style of Disney’s classic animated movies, including Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953). Wa...
Blair was born Mary Browne Robinson and grew up in poverty alongside her fraternal twin sister, Augusta, and their elder sister, Margaret. Her father, John Donovan Robinson, was a bookkeeper who practiced calligraphy, and her mother, Varda Morton Valliant, was a seamstress who repaired and embroidered priests’ robes for the Episcopal Church. The family moved several times, eventually settling in Morgan Hill, California. Mary Robinson’s parents nourished her love of art from a young age, even spending less money on food so they could buy her art supplies.
In 1929 Robinson enrolled at San José State College (now San José State University), California, with the goal of becoming an art teacher. While a student, she actively exhibited her work and began gaining recognition—she even appeared in the San Jose Mercury Herald in 1931 posed in front of her charcoal drawing that was shown in the annual Pacific Art Association exhibition in Fresno. A few months later Robinson appeared in the newspaper again when she was awarded a scholarship to attend the prestigious Chouinard School of Art in Los Angeles (now the California Institute of the Arts). There she studied under Pruett Carter, a successful magazine illustrator and Chouinard’s director of illustration. She also met Lee Everett Blair, a fellow scholarship student known for his regionalist watercolours depicting life on the Pacific Coast. The pair married in 1934, and Robinson took her husband’s surname.
Shortly thereafter, Blair’s husband came home telling her of a 10-week trip sponsored by the U.S. government for Disney studio artists and writers to visit Latin America. The excursion was part of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy, with the goal of promoting goodwill between the United States and Latin American countries as well as halting the spread of Nazi and fascist tendencies. The artists and writers were to familiarize themselves with the cultures and geography of the region and to use their research to create a series of propaganda cartoons. Mary Blair set up a meeting with Walt Disney to ask to be included. She was rehired and joined the group in Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, Chile, and Mexico. Two cartoons, Saludos Amigos (1942) and The Three Caballeros (1944), were produced as a result of the Latin American trip and feature Blair’s sketches and watercolours from her travels. These productions are now considered problematic as they perpetuate stereotypes, exoticize the Indigenous other, and often depict the Latin American characters as silly and childlike.
The colours, dress, and decorative arts that Blair absorbed on this trip, however, influenced the rest of her career. She later recalled:
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From then on everything was extremely interesting. The type of work now involved—inspirational sketches, styling, obtaining material on survey trips—was started by this trip to South America. From ’41 on I felt that I [had] found a place in the business.
Upon her return home, Blair accepted a position working at Disney studios as an art director, where she generated and developed ideas for several of the company’s biggest films including Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. Blair became known for her modern designs, featuring stylized figures set within a decorative backdrop, and especially for her flat, bright areas of colour that were imbued with emotion and drama. One animator later said: “Mary was the first artist I knew of to have different shades of red next to each other. You just didn’t do that! But Mary made it work.” Two of her portraits of Peruvian children hung in the home of Walt and Lillian Disney, who displayed very little art from Disney studios.
Blair also concentrated on her work as an illustrator of children’s books, a career that she had embarked on while working for Disney studios. Her work for Little Golden Books was especially prized for its bright geometric shapes and patterning that featured sweet, rosy-cheeked children. She illustrated books such as Baby’s House (1950), I Can Fly ...
In 1963 Walt Disney reached out to Blair to design what would become her most well-known work as an artist—a musical boat ride featuring audio-animatronic dolls representing children and music from across the globe. Originally designed for the 1964 New York World’s Fair, the amusement park ride “it’s a small world” was an instant success and was ev...
Blair moved to Soquel, California, in the late 1960s, where she continued to illustrate and design. She died in 1978 at the age of 66 of a cerebral hemorrhage. After her death, Blair received numerous awards including a 1991 Disney Legends award and a 1996 Winsor McCay Award, which recognizes lifetime contributions in the art of animation. Blair’s ...
Mary Blair has been credited with introducing modernist art styles to Walt Disney and his studio by using primary colors to form intense contrast and colors that are unnatural to the image they are depicting. Blair's artwork was exhibited in The Colors of Mary Blair at the Museum of Contemporary
- Artwork made for The Walt Disney Company
- Lee Everett Blair (1934–1978)
- Preston Blair (brother-in-law)
Feb 15, 2016 · Blair’s name isn’t well known outside the worlds of animation and illustration, but her crisp, flat, graphic, cute midcentury modern style—showcased in the exhibit “Magic, Color, Flair: The World...
She developed a distinct look to her concept art by using vivid colors from gouache and tempera to create swirling, highly imaginative images that influenced many of Disney's feature films of the 1940s and 1950s.
Mary Blair (born Mary Browne Robinson; October 21, 1911 – July 26, 1978) was an American artist, animator, and designer. She was prominent in producing art and animation for The Walt Disney Company, drawing concept art for such films as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Song of the South and Cinderella.
Apr 27, 2014 · Mary Blair, it’s a small world concept art, ca. 1966; (Courtesy of the Blair Estate) Blair’s dynamic portrayals of emotions and relationships served her well when she became a concept artist in Disney’s Character Model Department.
