The Story of Inked Disney Publicity Drawings Pt. 7.
The largest group of inked Disney drawings that appears to still be in some sort of legal limbo is probably still in England. This group, whch consists of a large number of illustrations for two of the four David McCay (later reprinted minus 4 color illustrations per book, by Whitman) certainly has impotant originals for The Tortoise and the Hare and The Robber Kitten. After about thirty years of attempting to buy some or all of these drawings, I have pretty much given up hope of ever obtaining more than the three examples which I managed to buy more than 20 years ago.
I started hearing about this group of drawings in the early 1990s. Someone was shopping them around to Southern California animation art dealers. Early on I obtained a copy of the list of what were supposedly available inked illustrations. Every time any dealer told me about the drawings, I clearly indicated that I was interested. I believe I knew from the outset that the actual art was in England, so I wasn't too surprised that time and again nothing ever came of my expressions of interest. After a few years had passed, my friend, Howard Lowery told me that he had been approached about the drawings. I asked him to try to get them for me, and Howard knew that the Robber Kitten was my favorite Disney character -- he had sold me my first publicity drawing of the chracter, the title illustration for the 1935 book, a decade earlier. He managed to get three of the illustrations from the group -- one of the best, a large image of the Robber Kitten riding on his hobby horse, one of the worst, showing the Robber Kitten running back into his house [I already had a background painting showing a similar view of that house, which barely appeared in the cartoon, and a drawing of Toby Tortoise which I still don't fully understand. It is of the same extremely high quality in its inking as all of these drawings, but it is on paper which is somewhat coarse on the reverse side and of a different size than the typical Strathmore. I assume it was done in England for an English Disney Publication
In later years I asked my friend who deals in English watercolors in London to make inquiries in attempts to learn where the many other drawings were He found out that they were tied up in some sort of litigation over an estate, but, to my knowledge, have never again become available for purchase. At least, thanks to Howard Lowery's help, I was able to obtain from this group a few additional representations of inked drawings from two more 1935 Silly Symphanies which helped round out my overall collection of inked Disney Publicity drawings from the 1930s.
