Complete set of 13 of Charles M. Schulz's original drawings, with color cels of six of them, for sheet metal panels on the Wilbur Avenue Pedestrian Bridge ('Snoopy Bridge') of Tarzana Elementary School, Los Angeles, California. Each is accomplished in ink or felt tip, some over visible pencil sketches, on sturdy artist's paper, measuring approximately 10.5 x 12.5, all signed within the image, "Schulz." The drawings feature iconic Peanuts characters Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Schroeder, and Linus in familiar poses—Lucy reclines against Schroeder's piano, Charlie Brown and Lucy dress in baseball uniforms, and Snoopy gleefully leaps into the air. In overall fine condition, with occasional artist's corrections with white-out, pinpricks to corners, and some sides clipped a little irregularly. Housed in a custom-made clamshell case, titled in gilt on the leather spine.
This complete set of original pen-and-ink 'Peanuts' drawings was gifted by the artist in 1971 to decorate the newly erected overhead footbridge at the intersection of Wilbur Avenue and Collins Street in Los Angeles's suburban Tarzana neighborhood of San Fernando Valley.
The 90-foot pedestrian overpass was planned in 1969 to protect school children who needed to cross Wilbur Avenue, a five-lane thoroughfare which was also subject to frequent floods, to reach Tarzana Elementary School on the road's west side. A member of the school's parent-teacher association knew Charles Schulz personally and asked him whether he might consider donating drawings of his famous characters to embellish the concrete and steel bridge. The cartoonist's sketches were then blown up as twelve alternating life-size panels fastened across the span, each measuring 5 feet in height and 3 to 8 feet in width. To this day, more than a half-century on, the panels have proved remarkably resilient to the ravages of time and the weather, and the overpass is widely known in the area as the 'Snoopy Bridge.'
The present set includes a 13th sketch which was ultimately not chosen for the bridge, showing Charlie Brown sitting in a metal pail. On the verso of the drawing of Snoopy dancing is an earlier, abandoned sketch of the same motif. The six color cels are marked up for coloring by a colorist's hand. Includes the original manila envelope inscribed "Peanuts" in red felt-tip pen and return-addressed to the responsible engineer at the city's Department of Public Works, J. R. Penrose.
A fine survival, and a genuine slice of American life, of which Charlie Brown and his gang have been such a vital part since Schulz first introduced the 'Peanuts' comic strip in 1950.
