Jean de Brunhoff

Jean de Brunhoff (December 9, 1899 – October 16, 1937) was a French writer and illustrator known for creating the Babar books, the first of which appeared in 1931. He was the fourth and youngest child of Maurice de Brunhoff, a publisher, and his wife Marguerite. He attended Protestant schools, including the prestigious Ecole Alsacienne. Brunhoff joined the army and reached the front lines when World War I was almost over. Afterwards, he decided to be a professional artist and studied painting at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. In 1924 he married Cécile Sabouraud, a talented pianist, and they had two sons Laurent and Mathieu in 1925 and 1926; a third son, Thierry, was born nine years later.

The Babar books began as a bedtime story Cécile de Brunhoff (née Sabouraud) invented for their children, Mathieu and Laurent, when they were four and five years old, respectively. She was trying to comfort Mathieu, who was sick. The boys liked the story of the little elephant who left the jungle for a city resembling Paris so much that they took it to their father, a painter, and asked him to illustrate it. He turned it into a picture book, with text, which was published by a family-run publishing house, Le jardin des modes.^[2] Originally, it was planned that the book's title page would describe the story as told by Jean and Cécile de Brunhoff. However, she had her name removed.^[3] Due to the role she played in the genesis of the Babar story, many sources continue to refer to her as the creator of the Babar story.^[4][5][6]

After the first book Histoire de Babar (The Story of Babar), six more titles followed before Jean de Brunhoff died of tuberculosis at the age of 37.^[7][8][9] He was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

After Jean's death, his brother Michel de Brunhoff, who was the editor of French Vogue, oversaw the publication in book form of his two last books, Babar and His Children and Babar and Father Christmas, both of which had been done in black and white for a British newspaper, The Daily Sketch. Michel de Brunhoff arranged for the black and white drawings to be painted in color, drafting the then-thirteen-year-old Laurent to do some of the work.^[10] The French publishing house Hachette later bought the rights to the Babar series.^[11] The first seven Babar albums were reprinted and millions of copies were sold all around the world.

Soon after the end of World War II, Laurent, who had followed in his father's footsteps as a painter and had also studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiėre, began work on a Babar book of his own. Although his style of painting was different from his father's and he emphasized picture more than text in the creation of his books,^[12] he trained himself to draw elephants in strict accord with the style of his father. Consequently many people did not notice any difference in authorship and assumed the six-year gap in the series was because of the war.^[13][14] Laurent has always been careful to emphasize that Babar was his father's creation (and to some extent his mother's) and that he continued the series largely as a way of keeping his father and his own childhood alive.^[15]

Bibliography

• The Story of Babar. New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1934.
• The Travels of Babar. New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1934.
• Babar the King. New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1935.
• A.B.C. of Babar. New York: Random House, 1936.
• Zephir's Holidays. New York: Random House, 1937.
• Babar and His Children. New York: Random House, 1938.
• Babar and Father Christmas. New York: Random House, 1940.

Further reading

• Jean and Laurent de Brunhoff, Babar's Anniversary Album: Six Favorite Stories, with an Introduction by Maurice Sendak and family photos and captions by Laurent de Brunhoff (New York: Random House, 1981).
  • Sendak's introduction reprinted in Sendak's Caldecott & Co.: Notes on Books and Pictures (New York: Noonday Press, 1990).
• Ann Hildebrand, Jean and Laurent de Brunhoff: The Legacy of Babar (New York: Twayne, 1991).
• Christine Nelson, Drawing Babar: Early Drafts and Watercolors (New York: The Morgan Library and Museum, 2008).
• Nicholas Fox Weber, The Art of Babar (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989). Dorothée Charles, Les Histoires de Babar (Paris: Les Arts Décoratifs/ Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2011).

References