French artist Laurent de Brunhoff, "who nurtured his father's creation, a beloved, very Gallic and very civilized elephant named Babar, for nearly seven decades," died March 23, the New York Times reported. He was 98. Babar was born one night in 1930 when Laurent, then five, and his four-year-old brother, Mathieu, "were having trouble sleeping. Their mother, Cécile de Brunhoff, a pianist and music teacher, began to spin a tale about an orphaned baby elephant who flees the jungle and runs to Paris, which is conveniently located nearby."
Enthralled by the story, they told it to their father, artist Jean de Brunhoff, the next morning and he began to sketch the little elephant, whom he named Babar. Histoire de Babar (The Story of Babar), an illustrated picture book in which Babar's escapade is recounted in Jean de Brunhoff's script, was published in 1931. Six more picture books followed before he died in 1937, when he was 37 and Laurent was 12.
The last two books were only partly colored at the time of his father's death, and Laurent de Brunhoff finished them. Trained to be a painter, he decided at 21 to carry on the adventures of Babar.
His first book, Babar's Cousin: That Rascal Arthur, was published in 1946, and de Brunhoff went on to write and illustrate more than 45 additional Babar books. "For the first few years, many readers didn't realize that he was not the original author, so completely had he realized Babar's world and his essence--his quiet morality and equanimity," the Times noted.
"Babar, c'est moi," de Brunhoff often said. The stories have sold millions of copies. The last title, Babar's Guide to Paris, was published in 2017.
Charles de Gaulle was a fan, noting that the Babar books promoted "a certain idea of France." So was Maurice Sendak, though he said that for years he was traumatized by Babar's origin story: the brutal murder of his mother by a hunter. "That sublimely happy babyhood lost, after only two full pages," Sendak wrote in the introduction to Babar's Family Album (1981), a reissue of six titles, including Jean de Brunhoff's original.
Among the criticisms of the works was the charge that Babar "was an avatar of sexism, colonialism, capitalism and racism. Two early works were particularly offensive: Jean de Brunhoff's The Travels of Babar (1934) and Laurent de Brunhoff's Babar's Picnic (1949) both depicted 'savages' drawn in the cruel style of their times, as cartoon images of Africans," the Times wrote. During the late 1960s, when Toni Morrison, then a young editor at Random House, Babar's publisher, objected to the imagery in Babar's Picnic, de Brunhoff asked that it be taken out of print. He also excised racist scenes from The Travels of Babar when that title was included in Babar's Family Album.
For Laurent, the idea and the images came first, after which he began to sketch and paint what that might look like. When he married his second wife, Phyllis Rose, a professor emerita of English at Wesleyan University, they often collaborated on the text.
In 1987, de Brunhoff sold the rights to license his elephant to businessman Clifford Ross, who then sold those rights to a Canadian company, Nelvana Ltd., with the understanding that Ross would continue to be involved in the conception of future products. What followed was what Times described as "an elephantine array" of Babar-abilia--including Babar pajamas and slippers, wallpaper and wrapping paper, perfume, fruit drinks, backpacks, blankets and bibs. There was also Babar: The Movie (1989), as well as a TV series.
"Babar and I both enjoy a friendly family life," de Brunhoff wrote in 1987. "We take the same care to avoid over-dramatization of the events or situations that do arise. If we take the correct, efficient steps, we both believe that a happy end will come. When writing a book, my intention is to entertain, not give a 'message.' But still one can, of course, say there is a message in the Babar books, a message of nonviolence."
