Pink castles, talking sofas, and a prince transformed into a teapot: what sounds like fantasies from the pioneering animation of the Walt Disney Animation Studios were in fact the realities from the colorful salons of Rococo Paris.

Join Royal Oak and Friends of the Louvre as Wolf Burchard, Associate Curator in the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will give a virtual tour of the museum’s first-ever exhibition this past Spring that explored the work of Walt Disney and the hand-drawn animation of the Walt Disney Animation Studios. If you missed it at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the show, Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts, is on view at the Wallace Collection, London from April 6, 2022 – October 16, 2022.

The exhibition examines Disney’s personal fascination with European art and French visual culture. Dr. Burchard will explain the use of French art and architectural motifs in Disney’s films, and draw parallels between the studios’ magical creations and their artistic models. Focusing on three French fairytales retold by Disney in animation (Cinderella, 1950; Sleeping Beauty, 1959; and Beauty and the Beast, 1991) Burchard will discuss tapestries, furniture, Boulle clocks and Sèvres porcelain and compare them to production artworks and designs from the collection of the Walt Disney Archives and Walt Disney Family Museum.