Kay Rasmus Nielsen
Who
Danish illustrator and designer, born in Copenhagen on 12 March 1886 to Martinus Nielsen, director of the Dagmar Theatre, and the actress Oda Nielsen. He trained in Paris at the Academie Julian and the Academie Colarossi from 1904 to 1911, made his name with gift books in London, designed for the theatre in Copenhagen, and worked for Walt Disney in California. He died in Los Angeles on 21 June 1957.
Why they matter
East of the Sun and West of the Moon (1914) is one of the high points of the golden-age gift book, and Nielsen's version of the fairy tale is his own: Art Nouveau line with patterns taken from Japanese art, and a taste for the melancholy and dramatic side of the stories rather than the cosy one. His colour plates were reproduced by a four-colour process where many of his contemporaries' used three. At Disney the same sensibility went into the Night on Bald Mountain and Ave Maria sequences of Fantasia.
What to buy
The books as issued are the realistic original. East of the Sun and West of the Moon came out from Hodder & Stoughton in 1914 in a limited edition of 500 numbered copies signed by Nielsen on the limitation page, bound in gilt-decorated vellum with silk ties and pictorial endpapers, with 25 mounted colour plates. That is the top of his book market; check that the signed limitation page and all 25 plates are there. A single plate taken out of one of these books is a page reproducing his watercolour, not a print he made. The drawings and watercolours themselves are rare and a far more expensive market. The cheapest honest way to see the colour work is Dover's paperback, Nielsen's Fairy Tale Illustrations in Full Color, though it is not always in stock.
Notes
He is not public domain: he died in 1957, so his work stays in copyright until the end of 2027 in life-plus-70 countries, and free image sites are not linked here. The V&A holds drawings, including a pen-and-ink illustration for The Widow's Son (1916) and a design for East of the Sun and West of the Moon; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, showed more than 45 works from the Kendra and Allan Daniel Collection in 2019-2020. His other books include Hans Andersen's fairy tales (1924) and Red Magic (1930).
Story
Nielsen's Hollywood years ended badly and paid off late. A recommendation from Joe Grant got him into the Walt Disney studio, where he worked from 1937 to 1941. His designs went into the Night on Bald Mountain and Ave Maria sequences of Fantasia, and he painted concept art for a proposed package film of Hans Christian Andersen stories that was to include The Little Mermaid. He was let go because his work was seen as too dark.
His last years were spent in poverty. He went back to Denmark and found that nobody wanted his work there either. His last commissions came from schools and churches in Los Angeles, among them a painting of the 23rd Psalm for the Wong Chapel of the First Congregational Church. When he died in 1957, his funeral was held beneath it.
His widow, Ulla, gave his remaining illustrations to the artist and architect Frederick Monhoff, who tried to place them in museums. None, American or Danish, would take them.
The Andersen film was shelved. More than fifty years later his concept paintings for The Little Mermaid fed into Disney's 1989 adaptation, made by the studio that had let him go for being too dark.
Key works
- In Powder and Crinoline (1913) - 24 colour plates
- East of the Sun and West of the Moon (1914) - Hodder & Stoughton, 25 colour plates
- You'd best go down to the gardener (1916) - V&A, E.508-1916
- Hansel and Gretel (1925) - 12 colour plates
- Night on Bald Mountain / Ave Maria, Fantasia (1940) - Walt Disney
In museum collections
- The Man Who Never Laughed (1912)
The Met ↗
See the work
Prints
Books
Originals
See also
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