Document details

Sylvia Holland was one of the three top women story artists at the Disney Studio before World War II, along with Mary Blair and Bianca Majolie.

She was hired on September 6, 1938, and was assigned to work on Fantasia. She tackled the Pastoral Symphony and directed the Waltz of the Flowers sequence in the Nutcracker Suite. She was also heavily involved in Fantasia’s unproduced sequel, and created the beautiful concept drawings for The Swan of Tuonela, Adventures in a Perambulator (based on a musical piece by John Alden Carpenter), The Flight of the Bumble Bee (based on Rimsky-Korsakov’s famous piece from The Tale of Tsar Saltan), Butterflies (based on a piano piece composed by Edvard Grieg), Mosquito Dance (on a musical piece by Paul White called Five Miniatures for Piano), the Dragonfly Ballet (based on Chopin’s Minute Waltz), and Baby Ballet (based on some music by Chopin or a medley of Handel, Mozart and Brahms, depending on sources). […]