WR 375 δ Muller (1910-1985) A set of six Danish original illustrations Watercolour Several signed and inscribed Various sizes £2,000 - £3,000
$3,200 - $4,800 €2,800 - €4,200
Jørgen Müller (1910-1985) was Denmark’s first professional animator. His career began in England where from 1935 to 1937 he worked as an animator for Anglia Films. It was during this time that he first adopted the name Jorgen Myller, to which he would return periodically throughout his career. In 1938 he went back to Denmark and began making commercials for a large publishing company called Gutenberghus (later media giant Egmont), which also produced a number of magazines. These included “Hjemmet” (The Home), an extremely popular lifestyle magazine that was circulated throughout Scandinavia and is still in print today. From the 1950´s through to the 1970’s, Müller was employed as an illustrator for Hjemmet, initially illustrating articles and serialized novels and later the front pages. For one of his earliest covers, Müller was asked to create a scene filled with a large group of children at play. This “swarm” cover as it was known became such a success that Müller’s work would decorate Hjemmet’s cover for years
168
M A L L E T T LONDON • NEW YORK
to come, his drawings henceforth being referred to as “Myller-tegninger” or “Myllerier” (Müller drawings or Swarm drawings). This collection of watercolours is very much a product of the Hjemmet-Myllerier period. Müller was a highly accomplished and technically adept artist. Like many illustrators he found his stylistic inspiration in the contemporary media and photography and as such, his work is steeped in the style of the era during which it was created. His characters clearly draw inspiration from the great screen icons of the 1950’s, though frequently owe something to his lovely wife Edel. Müller’s legacy to the world of animation was, even during his lifetime, to be significant. The success of his Swarm drawings saw Gutenberghus expand successfully into the world of animation and work in close cooperation with Disney, while one of his pupils Børge Ring would go on to win an Oscar at the Academy Awards in 1984 for his animated film Anna & Bella.