Mary Blair

Mary Blair learned her craft at The Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles in the mid-1930s. She joined The Walt Disney Company in 1940 where she created concept paintings for projects related to Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), and The Lady and the Tramp (1955). Along with her husband, Lee Blair, who also worked for Walt Disney, she accompanied Disney and several of his artists on a South American tour in 1941. Upon their return, Blair created concept art that ended up being used for films inspired by the trip, including Saludos Amigos (1942) and The Three Caballeros (1944). 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. Her unique designs led Walt Disney to assign her work on the films Song of the South (1948), The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949), Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953).