THEABANDONEDPAINTINGS

Carl Barks made hundreds of oil paintings during his last 50 years. Many of the earlier motifs originate from his surroundings and depict people, churches, and nature scenes, while others were painted in his special series titled Famous Figures of History as they might have looked if their Genes had gotten mixed with Waterfowl, but the most famous ones were his numerous Disney ducks artwork.
Barks actually scrapped a number of seemingly fine paintings that never were seen by the public! The primary reason would be that he was not able to impart exactly what he had in mind as for idea, composition, or colour, and this caused him to give up and proceed to another artwork. Some of the scrapped and unfinished paintings were not necessary lost, as Barks occasionally used them for another painting by covering the initial motif with a new one thus a few of the official paintings may have had an earlier 'life'! As Barks once said about his earlier paintings: There were so many layers of mountains, trees, and clouds that the paint would look like rhinoceros hide...

This page concentrates on some of the Disney duck paintings that did not pass muster in Barks' own mind. There is, of course, not much information that can be obtained about the given up artwork from Barks' files, but below you are treated to some that were abandoned with both idea sketches and preliminary paintings.

This work received the working title Which Disney Themepark Is This? (Barks wrote Theme Park as one word), and here he focused on many real Disneyana collectibles. The initial idea was that the ensuing painting should embellish the front cover of a new book on Disneyana, but it never happened.

EXTRA

In the midst of painting Disney duck motifs Barks suddenly opted for an artwork with no apparent connection to the duck artwork. It was even given both code numbering and work title as if it was indeed to be a duck painting!
It seems to portray four human teenagers visiting and exploring a storage of ancient Egyptian artifacts inside a tomb. The scenery has been detailed drawn with a lead pencil on a Masonite board, which is marked #26-73 Dreams of Discovery - Cache of Ancient Tomb Robbers on the backside. The size is 16x20" (400x500mms) and the condition is relatively fine despite some peeling around the edges enabling traces of Gesso to peer through. Gesso is a white paint mixture consisting of a binder mixed with chalk, gypsum, and pigment. It is used for preparation of wood boards as a base for paint.
What Barks' intentions were, trying his hand in such an atypical scene, is unknown, but it must have been more than just a whim, because he took it up again a year after it was abandoned and marked it #8-74 Cache of Ancient Tomb Robbers. This too was abandoned...