Drawing Babar

Both Beth Gersh-Nesic and I were enthusiastic about the Drawing Babar: Early Drafts and Watercolors exhibition that is on view at the Morgan Library & Museum through January 4, 2009. Primarily because we are both parents who read Babar books to our respective, sleepy, young offspring, and the Babar series was initially the creation of a fellow mother. Nostalgia and the Sisterhood of Motherhood aside, this very special exhibition contains virtually every surviving scrap of both father Jean (1899-1937) and son Laurent (b. 1925) de Brunhoff's first Babar books in their original French text.

Now, Beth can read and translate French as easily as she breathes (she in fact teaches French translation at the undergraduate level), and as for me? Well, if you've spent any amount of time hanging out with me here on the About.com Art History website, you know that I feel illustrators are the unsung heroes of the Art World, and children's book illustrators--the best of the best--shape our early world views. Art, in my opinion, has already reached its loftiest goal when it kindles a life-long love of itself in the bright eyes of a small child, intently looking and listening.

So yes, admittedly, we were both prepared to like the Drawing Babar... exhibition. I was not expecting to fall in completely in love with it, but, ah. There you go. Love! If you have the chance, hie yourselves (and your little ones) to the Morgan Library & Museum and check this out. It will make the lap-sitting story-telling a hundred times more sweet and poignant--and that's truly saying something.

Babar to Share

• "Babar in the Big Apple" - Beth Gersh-Nesic's review
• Drawing Babar... image gallery

Image Credit:

Jean de Brunhoff (French, 1899–1937)
"Marriage and coronation of King Babar and Queen Celeste."
Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant (The Story of Babar), 1931
Final watercolor
14 1/8 x 10 3/8 in. (36 x 26.5 cm)
Gift of Laurent, Mathieu, and Thierry de Brunhoff, and purchased with the assistance of The Florence Gould Foundation and the Acquisitions Fund, Fellows Endowment Fund, Gordon N. Ray Fund, and Heineman Fund, 2004.
© The Morgan Library & Museum