Grand Tetons Sunset, Peter Ellenshaw, 1993

Peter Ellenshaw (1913-2007), whose artistic career spanned more than seven decades, was a seascape and landscape painting and also a longtime film maker whose clients included Walt Disney, Stanley Kubrick, Michael Powell and W. Percy Day.  He was an Academy Award winning special effects artist, a motion picture production designer, a concept illustrator and an official ‘Disney Legend.’

Born in London, England in 1913, Ellenshaw was fortunate enough in his early twenties to get a job as an apprentice to W. Percy Day, O.B.E., the British film industry’s foremost special effects artist and matte painter.  Matte shots are realistic paintings done on glass of extended sets or fantasy locations, which are combined with scenes of actors in real sets.  Day, the Royal Academy trained artist, took Peter Ellenshaw under his wing, working on such classics as Things to Come, The Thief of Baghdad and Black Narcissus.

After serving in the Second World War as a pilot for the Royal Air Force, Ellenshaw returned to the film industry as a matte artist for MGM’s Quo Vadis.  In the late 1940s Walt Disney approached Ellenshaw to work on the studio’s first live action feature, Treasure Island.  Thus began a professional collaboration and friendship that lasted over 30 years and 34 films.