Eyvind Earle

I came across this striking image – reminiscent of a Paul Nash landscape, but in a different register – by chance, while doodling about on the internet. It's by an artist I'd never heard of, called Eyvind Earle. With a name like that, I was hoping he'd be a Norwegian (Nigeness is still weirdly popular in Norway), but it turns out he was an American artist and illustrator (1916-2000), who, for his sins, did a lot of work for Disney, creating backgrounds and styling the look of animated features such as Sleeping Beauty (where the backgrounds are indeed preferable to the stuff going on in the foreground). Happily he devoted his last thirty years or so to full-time painting. Here's another of his sharply lit, long-shadowed landscapes.