10"x 8" Miniature Litho (1996)
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Full-color, comic reprint of “Back to the Klondike” |
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| Character images (c) Disney Enterprises, Inc. are provided for infor
mation purposes only and not for commercial reuse or reproduction. |
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Carl Barks was asked in an interview on June 24, 1984 to comment on his paintings in general and his favorites in particular of the 122 he did that were published in Another Rainbow’s The Fine Art of Walt Disney’s Donald Duck by Carl Barks. He responded with a smile, “I always liked The Goose Egg Nugget very much -- it told its own story.” AR produced it as a mini litho and did a full-size print of another that Barks said was “a very close second,” Nobody’s Spending Fool. If collectors today thought they wanted to invest in a single lithograph, serious consideration would have to be given to The Goose Egg Nugget! This is the story of his masterpiece …
One day many long years ago, young prospector Scrooge McDuck brazenly strode into the local Dawson City saloon. As all (well, almost all) patrons stare in wide-eyed wonder, he reaches into his poke and reveals the gold that will forever separate him from every other seeker of fortune in the Klondike -- The Goose Egg Nugget! In this painting, Carl Barks wove a rich tapestry of tension that draws the viewer’s gaze inexorably to the prize, glittering in light that seems to come more from Scrooge’s look of unbridled triumph than from the dim oil lamp. This painting was issued as a limited edition miniature lithograph by Another Rainbow, the thirty second (32nd) of a long-run series, rendered in fourteen (14) colors and touchplates, printed by Chicago’s Black Box on Opalesque Keramique, an exotic archival paper with exceptional ink holdout.
Speaking in 1982’s Fine Art book, Barbara Boatner observes, “Scrooge draws the bottom line with this Yukon version of the American Express Card (Don’t Leave Nome Without It).
“There is a wealth of detail as well as gold in the painting. ‘You’re not looking head on into that mirror,’ comments Barks. ‘You always see everything at a 45 degree angle from the line at which you look into it. Out there behind them is this window with snow on the sill, all in cold colors.
“’Inside, in the warm saloon, I tried to make the bottles look like the old whiskey bottles of that era. The brass spittoon and the brass rail, the picks and the gold pans, the kerosene lamp; those are things that had to be figured out and made authentic for the period of time. The hobnail boots, for example. It’s typical of the drunks of that period, that they’d drink themselves into such a stupor that they’d fall on the floor.’
“Two of the floozies watching Scrooge were adapted by Barks from real-life Klondike cuties named Nellie the Pig and Diamondtooth Gertie.
“The other characters follow the standard Disney convention and are dogs or pigs rather than ducks. Barks continues, ‘For one thing, there’s no mistaking a duck. When he’s with a dog-faced guy, there’s no resemblance between him and the outsiders. So I kept the ducks pretty much straight and the outsiders were all dog faces. When you come to think of it, if you use a horse face, the guy doesn’t resemble a human in any way any more. Goat faces and so on are about as far as you can go. Rat faces, too. But the dog faces and pig faces, they looked a little bit like human faces; that is, you could caricature them as human.’” The ecstatic babe to Scrooge’s right -- the lady duck with all that jewelry -- as Barks aficionados know -- is Glittering Goldie, a gold-digger of another type, who figures prominently in the book-length tale. Text about the image plus a 10”x 8” reproduction of the oil (printed as a double-page spread in The Fine Art book) appear on pages 184-185, plate 57, chronological number 68, Barks’ thirtieth (30th) painting from 1973. This award-winning coffee-table book was published in 1981 by Another Rainbow and remains today as one of the company’s seminal works.
All copies in five US and Canada editions of The Goose Egg Nugget came with a comic book reprinting the story behind the painting, “Back to the Klondike,” which first appeared in Uncle Scrooge #2 (1953). Even though original advertising did not mention inclusion of the comic, the Certificates of Authenticity all did. This is the reason the comics were not numbered to match the lithographs. It’s possible, then, that today -- when a secondary-market The Goose Egg Nugget lithograph appears on the secondary market -- the comic will have been removed or misplaced. Ordinarily, no lost value should be attached to its absence. However, copies are available, while limited supplies last (See ordering information below.) Published by Gladstone in May 1994’s 64-page issue of Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge Adventures #26, the Barks tale, “Back to the Klondike,” was colored by Summer Hinton, who Carl and his wife, Gare, watched grow from a young 14-year old to one of the major contributors as a colorist to her father’s line of Disney comic book publications.
A Canadian “Klondyke” Special Edition is listed below because our company does not view our northern neighbors as “foreign.” Also, many copies were actually sold here in the United States. These 100 commemorative prints were issued for the benefit of the Klondyke Centennial Society in Dawson City, Yukon.
- Regular Edition Price for #11 and up $395 (sold)
- Regular Edition Price for #2-10, add 15% (available)
- Regular Edition Price for #1, add 55% (available)
- Gold Plate Edition #11-100, add 20% (sold)
- Gold Plate Edition #2-10, add 55% (sold)
- Gold Plate Edition #1, add 125% (sold)
- Publishers and Printer’s proofs, add 80% (available)
- Artist Proofs, add 120% (sold)
- Progressive Proofs, Special Editions and Foreign Editions, inquire. (available)