MovieMattepainting: Peter the Great (1986) Cliff Culley

Peter the Great is a TV mini-series produced by NBC, filmed in Russia and Austria, with an international cast and crew made up by professional like Italian director of photography Vittorio Storaro, British and Russian art directors, John Blezard and Alexandr Popov, and with matte paintings by British artist Cliff Culley.

The miniatures were provided by M&P Wollensack as it appears on the titles, but I haven’t found anything about that name.

Cliff Culley is one of the big names on the British matte painting History, he started very young as a matte apprentice at Pinewood 1946 under Bill Warrington head of FX department. At that time was Les Bowie chief of matte painting department, who was succeeded by Albert Whitlock. Culley worked under Ellenshaw and Whitlock at some of the Disney movies filmed at Pinewood, like

The Sword and the Rose (1953)

When Whitlock went to the United States in 1954, Culley remained at Pinewood as a senior matte artist. He became chief of department and provided matte paintings, miniatures and optical tricks until middle 70´s when Pinewood matte department was closed down, he opened his own VFX house Westbury Design and Optical with the assistance of his son Neil Culley as a matte photographer, providing visual effects tricks until his retirement at 1997.

During all those years he had several matte painters working with him like Charles Stoneham at the '60s, Leigh Took from 1978 to 1985 to and Steven Begg at early '90s.

There is a big amount of matte paintings on Peter The Great and is highly probable that Culley had some matte assistant for that work.