1500 Pieces
"In days gone by" by Paul Detlefsen
"Born in Chicago in 1900, the son
of a medical doctor, Detlefsen studied at the Chicago Art Institute and
the Academy of Fine Arts before heading to Hollywood to make a name for
himself in the cartoon business. He couldn't get a job in the animation
field, so he settled for painting backdrops for films. Soon he became
one of the early masters of special effects. He supervised specialized
camera crews that augmented his background creations. He worked for
Cecil B. Demille and Douglas Fairbanks.
He joined Warner Brothers to work on "Cabin in the Cotton" with Bette
Davis and Richard Barthelmes. He stayed with the company twenty years
and over those years he and Walt Disney became good friends. He was in
the film industry for thirty years.
Movies fell on hard time and Detlefsen decided at age 50 to try his
hand as a calendar artist. His first painting, "The Good Old Days",
scored an immediate success and was topped in popularity only by Norman
Rockwell's Boy Scout Calendar. Most of the scenes created by Paul
Detlefsen were of his own creation and featured nostalgic charming turn
of the century rural settings that many of us can remember from our
childhood. For his models he used his daughter, grandchildren, other
family members and friends. He would photograph the scene so he could
paint, concentrating on realism, beauty and of course the nostalgia. He
did do two modern abstracts but decided that was not for him.
Detlefsen painted up to six months prior to his death on August 1, 1986 at age 86."
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