My Urban Sherpa

Laurent de Brunhoff & Babar at The Morgan

Laurent de Brunhoff, author and illustrator of the ongoing adventures of Babar will be at the Morgan Library & Museum today, Saturday, September 20 at 1:00.

The first exhibition of original drawings of the Babar Collection opened at the Morgan yesterday. Viewers are treated to the studies and original watercolors of Jean de Brunhoff’s introduction of Babar, a story created by his wife Cecile who told her sons Laurent and Mathieu of a young elephant and his adventures. The boys were enamored with the tale and encouraged their father, an artist, to create a children’s book around the character. What resulted was Histoire de Babar.

Jean de Brunhoff continued to write six additional adventures of Babar before passing away at the age of thirty-seven from spinal tuberculosis. At the time, Jean’s son Laurent was twelve. Nine years after his father’s death, at the age of twenty-one, and a period of studying art with his father’s teacher at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Montparnasse, Jean de Brunhoff continued the adventures of Babar, with Babar et ce coquin d’Arthur, published in 1964.

Laurent de Brunhoff continues to write today. With his wife as a collaborator for Babar’s adventures, Laurent de Brunhoff has penned thirty-seven additional adventures of Babar and his family. These include Babar’s Yoga, Babar’s Museum of Art, and Babar’s USA, published August 2008.

What you will find at this exhibition is work equally magical to this story. Jean de Brunhoff’s drawings and watercolors of Babar are lovely, and the story is poignant and timely. This work is paired with Laurent de Brunhoff’s drawings and watercolors for his first Babar adventure, Babar et ce coquin d’Arthur.

The Morgan is located at 225 Madison Avenue, between 36th and 37th Streets. The exhibition runs through January 4, 2009.