In the late 1970s, after Barks lost the license to do original Disney paintings, he turned to a new series of oils he called Kings and Queens of Myth and Legend. His Queen of Sheba was intended to be part of this series but was never finished. While included in Barks’s Animal Quackers, published in 1996, Barks never explained why he didn’t finish it, though editor Ethan Boatner remembered Barks asking that it not be included.

“Why didn’t he finish it? I think,” Garvin speculates, “that Don Ault or someone tapped Barks on the shoulder and suggested that the subject matter, especially the way Barks handled the black trumpeters and bearers, might be considered offensive. Born in a different era, Barks wasn’t always aware of how these kinds of comic stereotypes could be viewed. For my version, I just transformed them all into anthropomorphic cheetahs and gorillas, which solved a lot of problems. Barks had a knack for capturing and rendering absurd comic characters alongside realistically rendered ancient treasure, sparkling jewels, and lush fabrics… along with his well-endowed princesses and queens. I’ve loved this painting—even unfinished—since I first saw it in 1996.”