In 1946 one of his children, Laurent, by then an artist in his own right, took up where his father had left off nine years and a world war earlier. When he died in 1937 Babar's story stopped, too. de Brunhoff created Babar as an amusement for his three children.

Jean de Brunhoff was an artist and designer whose own father had been a fashion designer and one of the founders of the French magazine Vogue.

What Babar devotee could forget the terrible war with the rhinoceroses? Or how Babar won by painting huge eyes on the flanks of his elephant soldiers and scaring the wits out of the somewhat dense rhinos? There was a balloon voyage, once, and even a trip to the United States.Īll the Babar adventures are recalled in the current show at the Centre Culturel, beginning with the very first de Brunhoff drawings, some of them on lined paper torn from exercise books. Not that life was always so calm in Celesteville. Mostly, he prefers to relax with Celeste and their children or to putter in his garden under a floppy hat Bernard Berenson would have admired, spraying his flowers through his trunk. He is certainly one of the most benign of all rulers, his principal governing precept being that they who are governed least are governed best. A Benign Rulerīabar has always been a king, thanks to his creator Jean de Brunhoff, so he is probably one of the longest-reigning rulers anyway - not that 50 years is very long in elephant time. They have three children, Pom, Alexandre and Flore, but their household also includes Arthur, their cousin Zephyr, the mischievous monkey Cornelius, the oldest and wisest of all the elephants, and the Old Lady, that spare, dedicated person who raised Babar and gave him his middle-class yearnings. In case your memory is dim - and some original fans' memories might well be dim - Babar reigns over the geographically unspecified kingdom of the elephants from his capital city Celesteville, named after his wife, Queen Celeste. He is plump, conservative and benevolent, a leader by calling and bourgeois by choice.īabar, the king of the elephants, is 50 years old, and the Centre Culturel du Marais, a little museum and gallery in the Fourth Arrondissement, is giving him a summerlong party. Actually, he much more closely resembles one of those affable Scandinavian monarchs who pedal bicycles into town and enter roses in competitions.

Just because he believes in cradleto-the-grave social welfare. The Nouvelle Observateur has labeled him a radical socialist, but then they would.

Original babar the elephant