Pine Branch 

Eyvind Earle created this painting, Pine Branch, using a painstaking glazing technique, building up layers of tempera to achieve a luminous and dreamlike effect. Earle’s landscapes often feature trees, stylized and set against rolling hills and dramatic skies. These idealized and romantic scenes draw on a long tradition of landscape painting and the cultural association of nature with purity. Though Earle was a California modernist painter who worked in the mid to late 20th century, his landscapes are often devoid of any markers of modern life, seemingly untouched by industrialization or urbanization. The artist worked for Disney as a background artist for animated features, including Sleeping Beauty. Like much of his work, Pine Branch references fairytale landscapes which speak to the institutional history that shaped his artistic production. The painting invites us to consider the politics of imagery and the social conditions that shape artistic production. Looking into the archives of Disney and the history of landscape painting gives us a better understanding of the cultural context of this work.