I’ve decided to start writing blogs not only about the history and trivia surrounding animation, but also about my own experiences. We just got a collection of original art from The Little Mermaid, and that made me think of my many memories selling art from The Little Mermaid, or, “Selling Under the Sea”…
The Little Mermaid is a movie I’ve been selling cels and art from The Little Mermaid for so long, I supposed I should feel like one of those mythologically immortal mermaids, and sometimes I do! When I first started selling art from The Little Mermaid, it was shortly after the film’s original release in 1989. There was a Sotheby’s auction on December 15th, and I think I started selling the art through the Disney Fine Art program (directly from the studio) only a few months after that.
THE ART OF THE LITTLE MERMAID AUCTION
I went to that Little Mermaid Sotheby’s auction. I know a lot of people were shocked at the prices the art was going for, but I wasn’t. After all, I’d attended the Roger Rabbit auction on June 28th, 1989, saw the (unexpected) frenzy there, and the explosion of animation collecting that happened, in part, as a result of that auction and the press it received. The Little Mermaid auction happened at the beginning of the Disney Renaissance, and people were completely in love with the movie. This was also an opportunity to buy original backgrounds from the film, or key setups, meaning cels and backgrounds that belonged together.
I remember talking to Lella Smith, the head archivist at the Disney Archives, years later. She said selling key setups and original backgrounds from movies of the Disney Renaissance had been an absolutely horrible idea. She believed all backgrounds should have been saved for the archives, especially in retrospect, knowing The Little Mermaid was going to be the last hand painted Disney movies (they stopped using cels on the very next movie). Then after that, Disney had Sotheby’s auctions for their movies selling original backgrounds, with created cels made by Disney artists on them.
**After The Little Mermaid, Disney still made movies with 2D animation, but started scanning the original drawings into a computer and colorizing them inside a computer. That’s why there are no production cels from Beauty and the Beast!
There were a LOT of famous people in the audience, as well as folks like me, who were bidding for clients. Most of the collectors I know who bought art there paid 3 to 4 times what they expected to pay, which told me a little something about the passion for the film. That passion has only increased over time.
I was only in my early twenties at the time, but I’d been in sales, in some fashion, since my early teens. When Disney offered art from The Little Mermaid for sale to the very few galleries in business at the time, (there were probably 6 worldwide?) I knew Disney fans were going to go crazy for it.
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SELLING ARIEL BY THE POUND
Here’s the weird thing about it. Although at the auction it was clear certain scenes and characters were way more desirable than others, that’s not how they marketed them to us. There were only 3 set prices for all the art. There were the very secondary characters, like random fish, or Ariel’s sisters. Those were $1200. Then there were characters like Flounder, Triton, Eric, and Sebastian. Those were $1500. Then Ariel and Ursula cels were $2500. So far, so good, I guess. BUT: It didn’t matter if there were 5 characters on the cel with Ariel, it was still $2500. It also didn’t matter if she was cut in half and grimacing. They were all the same price. Sebastian with his eyes closed and alone on a shell? That was the same price as Sebastian in the center at the end of “Under the Sea”, surrounded by dozens of fish. Ariel on the rock at the end of A Part of Your World, Ariel and Eric with Max, and a 1 1/2 inch Ariel floating in the middle of a huge cel were all the same price. People bought it all.
I sold that art so fast, my head would spin. I sold entire sequences from the movie. Ariel putting the flower in Triton’s hair? I sold that whole scene. The famous scene I dubbed “naked Ariel”, when she got her legs? I sold those, too. I sold so much of it that in three months I had a downpayment for my own house. (The guys that hired me mistakenly figured I was just some girl and wouldn’t do much, so they offered me a low salary but a high commission) I KNEW I was in the middle of art history. All that being said, most of the world still thought animation art wasn’t “real art”. What brings me joy now is knowing there are so many people who bought the art way back then ONLY because they loved Disney and they loved The Little Mermaid, so they saved and scrimped and found a way to collect, and now their art is very valuable and collectors all over the world want what they have.
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JODI BENSON: EVANGELIST
One of my favorite stories about my experience with The Little Mermaid will live on in infamy with my longterm clients and Mermaid collectors…It always makes me laugh and shake my head.
When I opened my own gallery ArtInsights, one of the first things I wanted to do was have Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel, appear at my gallery. Fortunately for me, Disney Fine Art had only recently started to promote events to galleries (this was 1994, and there were now dozens of galleries specializing in animation art). They were promoting Jodi Benson and art from The Little Mermaid, so they paid for her to come to Reston and appear as well as SING for my collectors. I think at the time her fee was $10,000 an appearance, so it was lucky we didn’t have to pay that price!
I was very excited she was coming to Northern Virginia, and we planned a big event, including using the Hyatt across the street from our gallery for her performance. Now, I’ll tell you, she is a lovely gal, she really is. Her voice was in top form. BUT, I’d been told she was a devout born-again Christian, to be aware that she’d write “God Bless” on all the merch she signed, and might mention God during her time at the gallery. “That’s fine!”, I told her handler, (who was also her husband), “but be aware that we have a lot of Jewish collectors and there will be some Jewish kids present, so please tell her not to bring up Jesus.”
The plan was for Jodi to be introduced to the collectors at the Hyatt, and she would then come over to the gallery and sign art and merchandise for collectors. There were lots of kids in the front row, including my little pal Rachel (now grown, an elementary school teacher, and still a friend!) and her parents. Jodi appeared onstage, looking radiant, and sang A Part of Your World. There was a section on the middle of the song that was an instrumental break, where she started talking to the kids over the music. She talked about her love of singing, how much she enjoyed playing Ariel, and what an impact the experience had had on her life. Then she said, “And I want to tell you all, you never know where life will take you, and Jesus Christ, our savior, (and here she starting pointing to each child in turn..) has an extra special plan for each (point) and every (point) one of you (point).” Oops!
Oh well. People believe what they believe, and they have their passions, and Jodi Benson wouldn’t be herself without hers. Everything turned out just fine, but Rachel still remembers the moment The Little Mermaid told her Jesus had a plan for her!
Here she is in the studio working with Howard Ashman on her recording of A Part of Your World:
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STOLEN SIRENS AND COVETED CHARACTERS
There are several other memories I have relating to the art of The Little Mermaid. A few years after the initial release of art to galleries, I went to another Sotheby’s auction, one for Disney’s Aladdin. It too had original backgrounds being sold, but with matching and new hand-painted cels made specifically for the sale. I was staying around the corner from the auction house, in the same hotel as many collectors and dealers. I was invited by a big collector to a gathering and sale in another hotel room, and hearing they’d have original Disney production art from the 1940s, I went. When I got into the room, there are probably 20 or 30 people milling around, so it was a tight fit. I noticed a bottleneck in the corner of the room, so I went to investigate. There, on the floor, were three boxes of loose cels from The Little Mermaid, WITHOUT SEALS. That meant they’d been stolen from Disney. They were selling for $500 each. Now, I’m not always Miss Goody Two-Shoes, but I broke into a flop sweat. That was NOT cool! I really wanted to call the studio right then and there. (I didn’t, obviously!) I tried to see which sequences were being offered, and got a pretty good look at them. Suffice to say, I don’t sell cels without seals from The Little Mermaid. It made me a lot more appreciative that I had sold whole sequences in 1990 when Disney first released official art!
I also remember a time right before Disney stopped selling art to galleries. At the time, there were some wonderful archivists dealing with the art. This was around the year 2000, I think. ArtInsights had been part of the Disney Art Advisory Board for a long time, so I’d been going to the Disney archives and having meetings at Disney for years at that point. We’d seen movies in process years before their release, including the first showing of the first scene in The Lion King. Every person in that theater KNEW how big that movie was going to be, just by seeing the first 10 minutes. Anyway, we got invited to come to Disney and buy art for the very last time directly from the studio. Only about 5 galleries were offered that chance. It was in a big warehouse-type setting. There were rows and rows of tables stacked high with art. The folks who worked there had nothing to lose at that point, so they put out pretty much any and everything they could find. Now, I’d already sold a LOT of art from The Little Mermaid, so that wasn’t what I was necessarily after, but the other 4 galleries made a beeline for the tables with Little Mermaid art. Being newer galleries, they were VERY excited to get art from that movie. So I went over to the folks who had put the show together and asked, “are there tables other than the ones with Mermaid art I should check out here?”, and they said, “You might want to check out the ones OVER THERE.” All the way on the other side of the room was a table sort of set apart, and on its own. I calmly walked over and started looking through the piles of art and they were concept paintings all the way back to 101 Dalmatians, and even a few key setups!! Disney had NEVER sold concept art before that I knew of, and these had seals from Disney. I literally burst into tears (but quietly). Thank goddess I had come representing a number of wealthy collectors, because I built a pile of art from every movie from 1960 forward. That day, a lot of newer Little Mermaid collectors were sated with art from the other 4 galleries, and I was able to buy concept art by some of the greatest Disney artists in history, so…win/win!
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It feels like I’m very old friends with The Little Mermaid, and Ariel and Eric and Max and Flounder. We’ve been through a lot. A number of my clients have gotten old enough that they’ve started letting go of their collections, and that, again, is a win/win. Every generation starting with the one that saw The Little Mermaid as teeny tinies have fallen in love with the movie all over again. It’s on Disney+, so now the newest generation of kids are seeing the 1989 classic for the first time. The recent live action movie has also created a new appreciation for the animated feature. I have collectors and fans write me almost every day asking about cels from the film, more than almost any other Disney film. I don’t think that will ever change. Just like Snow White, the first Disney full-length animated feature, is an iconic milestone in Disney history, so too is The Little Mermaid, the LAST hand-painted Disney animated feature.
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So, here are the cels I just got from a very old friend and longtime collector. Most of them are pieces I sold him “way back when”, as they say. Some of them even have the “Little Mermaid wave frame” we used, a frame that no longer exists, but whose shape mirrors the waves of the sea. There’s even one with a matching original background sold at the Sotheby’s auction in 1990! Click on any of these originals to get more information and see the exact moment each cel appears in The Little Mermaid.
TO SEE ALL ART FROM THE LITTLE MERMAID, CLICK HERE.
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Ariel and Flounder under the sea and investigating finds like a new “dinglehoffer” really captures Ariel as a character, which is why cels from this scene are so desirable! *notice the WAVE FRAME!
This image of Ariel is from the very first moments of A Part of Your World, and while it comes from a frame that included a cel of Flounder and doesn’t include that layer of cel, it DOES show Ariel in full figure, including her tail, from one of the classic scenes from the film. Click on the image to see exactly where it happens, which is the moment she sings “Look at this stuff. Isn’t it neat?”!!!
This next image is from where she’s singing “I’d love to explore that shore up above” as part of A Part of Your World. What could be better for an Ariel lover?
This original production cel from the end of the A Part of Your World scene is one of the most highly sought-after images from the film! *WAVE FRAME!
We love this original production cel from the dinner scene in The Little Mermaid, especially since it’s a key setup, originally sold at the Sotheby’s auction on December 15th, 1990! Here’s your opportunity to buy the cel and the background that belongs to it from the classic film! If there was ever a time for me to be hard sell, this would be it. If it strikes you, by all means, get it!
Last, but not least, is Ariel in her nightgown, and in the storied “WAVE FRAME”! We have a few more images that we might be able to release, but for now, snap up the ones you see here. Art from The Little Mermaid is only going to get harder to find!