DISNEY PAINTINGS

In 1971, a fan tracked Barks down and gave him an order for an oil painting with a duck motif at a price of 150 dollars. Gentle as he was Barks turned to Disney's and asked them jokingly (the company owns the ducks) if this would be possible. To everybody's amazement - especially his own - he was given special permission for a limited time.
Now two things happened. He was unveiled to the world as 'The good Artist' and secondly he began producing paintings. This started a vicious circle in which his newly found - and rapidly rising - fame got him more orders for paintings than he would ever be able to comply with, but he kept on working. The prices skyrocketed.
At first Barks had simply increased his prices in an attempt to scare off customers, that had little effect and he ended up becoming a very wealthy man. As did the buyers. They could resell their paintings for 100,000's of dollars. Even today the prices are still rising astronomically.
Barks kept on painting. Not because of the money but because he he loved the work. Although Barks had given up early on trying to understand his fanatic fans, he made sure that the paintings were extremely good with lots of tiny details and in-jokes. Embark on a trip through the following pages and share the fascination all duck fans feel while viewing the well-composed and colourful works of art, which all, in some way refer to his Disney comics.

Barks used many different techniques. When working in oil he painted on canvas or Masonite, but he also produced lots of drawings in water colour, coal, crayon and pencil. He was simply a veritable bundle of energy in his golden years.

The paintings are divided into two main groups since they were all made during two periods of time. Barks used his first licence to paint ducks during the years 1971 to 1976. This resulted in 122 official works but an unknown number of unofficial and non-finished works were made as well.
In 1981, Barks obtained another licence which evidently lasted for the remainder of his life. The idea was to produce paintings which could be transformed into lithographs enabling a wider audience. Unfortunately, the numbering and chronology of these later works became very confused. This will be seen as you explore the following pages.