Laurent de Brunhoff

Laurent de Brunhoff has kept the spirit of Babar and his family alive for more than fifty years. Originating as a bedtime story told by Laurent’s mother, Cecile, Babar first came to life through the art of Laurent’s father, Jean de Brunhoff, who produced seven books about the character.

After the war, Laurent, who inherited his father’s artistic gift, trained at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under the painter Othon Friesz and began living as an artist in Montparnasse. But, wishing to maintain his tie to his father and the imaginative world of his childhood, he longed for the return of Babar, not his father’s Babar, but his own. Their intergenerational artistic partnership had begun even earlier, when Laurent was a teenager, and was asked to do the color for several pages which his father had left in black and white. Laurent’s own first Babar book, Babar et ce coquin d’Arthur (Babar’s Cousin, That Rascal Arthur), was published in 1946 when he was 21.

Building upon his father’s original framework, Laurent has gone on to create more than thirty books about Babar that have made both his and the character’s name recognized and beloved around the world. Not only has Laurent provided a score of new adventures for the elephant family, he has also given new life to the celebrated characters through his spontaneous use of line and color. Babar and his family are alive and well and as popular today as when they were first conceived. Recent books include Babar’s USA (2008) and Babar’s Celesteville Games (2011).

De Brunhoff, who holds both French and American citizenship, was made an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur. He and his wife, Phyllis Rose, split their time between New York City and Key West, Florida.