This man who spends his life drawing elephants was trained as an abstract painter and once had a studio in Montparnasse section of Paris. Bald at the crown, his ring of remaining hair stands out in recalcitrant tufts. He is a slender man, neither tall nor short, with cheerful blue eyes and an easy smile. “Look,” de Brunhoff said, “here they are as Fred and Ginger.” According to de Brunhoff’s brand of phylogeny, it seems perfectly plausible that a pair of pachyderms weighing in at three or four tons apiece should appear as lithe and nimble as Astaire and Rogers.ĭe Brunhoff exudes an infectious enthusiasm as he leads the tour through Babar’s imaginary forest. In an earlier series of illustrations, Babar and Celeste are pictured as Hollywood stars. history, portrays Babar crossing the Delaware. Yet another in the same series, celebrating important moments in U.S. One of the latter depicts a stern-faced Babar and wife, Celeste, in a playful spoof of Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.” A watercolor for a forthcoming calendar shows Celeste as a suffragette. The walls are plastered with renderings of Babar, some in de Brunhoff’s preferred medium of watercolor and others framed as posters. There are no trees, just a wonderful antique quilt draped over a window seat and a suitably worn Oriental rug on the floor.
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