ART

Cels Sell: A cel-and-background set-up of Briar Rose daintily dipping her toe in a forest brook, from Disney’s 1959 “Sleeping Beauty,” sold for $99,000 at an auction Sunday night in Burbank, just below its pre-sale estimate. A display of cels and a background from the same film used to explain the art of animation at Disneyland brought $23,650, nearly twice its estimate. There was also growing interest shown in cartoon material from Warner Bros. A cel of Sniffles, a mouse character created by Chuck Jones during the ‘30s, sold for $10,000, almost 10 times its estimate, and a collection of 54 Warners model sheets, estimated at $600-$900, brought $11,000. The item that had attracted the most pre-sale attention, a rare cel of Chernobog, the black god from the “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence of “Fantasia,” failed to find a buyer. Of the 359 lots offered, 328 sold for a total of $758,000. The auction was conducted by animation art dealer Howard Lowery at the Burbank Hilton.