THEMONEYLAKEPAINTING

When Carl Barks made his Disney duck paintings he would often refer to specific events in his comic book stories or to individual front covers of his own production. One of the most well known motifs from the latter group is the so-called Money Lake painting from 1971 featuring Scrooge McDuck and Donald Duck sitting in a rowboat in the middle of a lake of coins. Initially, the painting was made on the basis of the story in FC0386 Only a Poor Old Man from 1952, and there can be little doubt that Barks liked the main idea and the overall composition, because he would later revert to the theme several times. This is the story.

The front cover for FC0386		One of the gag ingredients that Barks invented was fishing rods mounted with purses.
		In U$09 from 1955 Barks made a one-pager showing Scrooge in a rowboat inside his Money Bin.

Once seen you are not likely to forget the motif from the front cover of Barks' FC0386 story, because he had the unique ability to dream up innovative events, scenarios, and themes that stick to your mind. When you look at the front cover art you might not even wonder about the utterly strange and totally unrealistic scene. On the contrary, you accept it unconditionally and rejoice over the hilarious main gag as well as the many sub-gags.

14-71 Money Lake AKA Uncle Scrooge #1

Title: Barks followed his usual numbering system where 14-71 denotes that the painting is the 14th made in 1971. The #1 refers to the front cover of Barks' first comic book featuring Scrooge (FC0386 Only a Poor Old Man).

Technical: Barks made the painting on canvas in the size 16x20" (405x510mm).
As for the general layout of the coins Barks was very conscious that they should look natural. It is easy to stack up coins to make them look almost as layers of cookies, but the challenge is to make them look as if they have just fallen down in a helter-skelter pattern.
As for the colour tones of the coins Barks said: Painting gold was one of the things I tinkered with that was really tricky. I finally found two or three combinations of colors that worked for the gold and brass. In his many coin-filled paintings hereafter Barks could draw on the same formula of colour tones, until he reached perfection with the so-called Rembrandt colours on his gold, silver, and brass coins.

Oddities: As indicated before, the front cover and the painting contain a lot of oddities (even if you grant a fair amount of cartoonish slack), some of which are briefly listed here:
The lake is covered in coins that must be plasma-like as it is possible to row around in them. - Scrooge should not be able to count his coins when the boat (and the coins!) are moving, and it will only be the top ones that are countable anyway. - The calculator has too few buttons. - The roll of paper leads nowhere. - Naming the lake Money Lake #1 indicates that there are more lakes like this, which should not be the case. - The three nephews only have two purses. - Filling the purses will be almost impossible (it is difficult enough to fill a bucket with water from a distance). - The rowboat's name is a rather strange choice of words as Penny-Wise (today spelled with a hyphen) basically means 'concerned with saving SMALL sums of money'. The term originates from the British language and reads 'Penny-Wise and Pound-Foolish' meaning 'Thrifty with small sums and foolish with large sums'.

Gimmick: Certainly not many viewers have noticed Barks' gimmick, which he used in this and his following money lake paintings: The presence of a small coin on the rowboat's board right next to the calculator. It can indeed be speculated that it is Scrooge's famous Dime Number One! The reason for it not being present in the front cover from 1952 is the simple fact that it was not introduced until 1953 in FC0495 'Money Bin Tank'...

Whereabout: Already from the beginning of his duck painting career Barks had a waiting list that grew in a pace much faster than he would ever be able to fulfill. Still, he decided to hand 14-71 over to a friend as a present.