'Slowly, almost lazily, the shark opened his mouth (which was big enough to have swallowed a perambulator) and made a huge lunge at the peach.'

[James and the Giant Peach, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1961]

Lane Smith
Shark
pencil
signed
Image size: 5.8 by 18.5 cm

This drawing and the following lot are preliminary conceptual drawings for the film version of James and the Giant Peach.

Lane Smith provided the illustrations for the edition of James and the Giant Peach published by Disney Press in 1996 and he was the conceptual designer for the animated film itself released in 1996. In The Roald Dahl Treasury he provided a double–page colour illustration of James and the insects crawling over the peach.

James and the insects are at sea on the peach when they spied a large creature at sea: a shark.

£100–150