The Beauty of Matte Paintings in Film History and the Legacy of Peter Ellenshaw

Simply put (through my opinion), Peter Ellenshaw WAS the heart and soul of matte paintings used in movies from the 1940's-1990's. If you've never seen the work of this amazing (and, unfortunately late as of one year of this article at the age of 93) matte painter and all-around fine-art master--you apparently haven't watched many Disney films. The thing is, you have seen his work many times over, but probably assumed that all that ethereal-looking scenery in the backgrounds of many live-action Disney films was real. That patented "look" of Disney scenery was the artistic style of the U.K.'s own Peter Ellenshaw. His impressionistic mattes gave the true magical essence people subconsciously still ascribe to a film produced by Walt Disney. It's no wonder then that Ellenshaw and Disney became close friends after Walt hired him to create mattes on his first live-action film in 1950: "Treasure Island" and then full-time starting with the still-stunning "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" in 1954.

It's probably a fair assessment to say that Ellenshaw is the first person people think of now when thinking of the old handmade matte paintings used to create surroundings in movies that couldn't be produced otherwise in an age long before CGI. There were already artists creating matte paintings effectively before Ellenshaw became so renowned in the field during the 1940's. In case you're not familiar with how matte paintings worked in a pre-CGI world--it was basically a detailed painting on glass used to fill in a scene with an interior of a room or an outdoor scene. This painting on glass would then be composited into the existing scene to give the illusion the film had a higher budget creating elaborate set designs or filming at out-of-this-world locations.