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Madeline at the Paris Flower Market, 1955; Oil on canvas

Via the New York Historical Society

Following in the footsteps of the Morgan Library’s “The Little Prince: A New York Story” and the New York Public Library’s “The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter,” the New-York Historical Society’s foray into children’s literature, “Madeline in New York: The Art of Ludwig Bemelmans,” is on display until October 19th. Children, nostalgic adults, and fans of Bemelmans’ illustrations will find much to enjoy, though little that surprises.

Honoring the 75th anniversary of Madeline’s publication, the exhibit traces the life of illustrator Ludwig Bemelmans and the development of one of children’s literature’s most beloved heroines. Undeterred by appendicitis, tigers, or the naughty boy next door, Madeline, though the smallest of the twelve little girls in Miss Clavell’s care, has always been “the bravest of all.”

Constantly in trouble as a child, Bemelmans became a champion of the small, overlooked, and misunderstood. He believed that young people were intelligent and deserved good work. Writing to his editor, he noted: “We are writing for children but not for idiots.” Viewers of the exhibit, whether children or non-idiotic adults, will appreciate the way the New-York Historical Society has taken Bemelmans’s work seriously. 

The exhibit follows the arc of Bemelmans’ life—from his childhood in Germany to his early death in 1962. Born to a Belgian mother and German father, Bemelmans’ early years were rocky—his father left the family for the governess, and Bemelmans struggled in school. As a teenager, after failing one grade three times, he was offered the options of reform school or emigration to America. He chose America, and in 1914 he arrived in New York to work for his uncle’s hotel—hence Madeline’s appearance now at the Society.

Bemelmans loved drawing, and in the 1920s he began publishing cartoons ranging from “The Thrilling Adventures of Count Bric-a-Brac” to a series of Jell-O ads entitled “The Prince Gets His Just Desserts.” The neat lines and coloring bear no resemblance to the exuberant colors and slapdash lines of the Madeline books, but hints of Madeline’s themes emerge from the early work. In “Silly Willy,” the rhyming couplets recount the resourcefulness of a very small and rather lonely seal who is stacking books in order to reach the phone:

                  I’m glad that Shakespeare and Scott

                  Have written such a lot.

                  Here’s the history of Rome,

                  A very, very heavy tome

                  A book of poems from my aunt,

                  And those are all the books I want

                  For I am small and all alone and

                  Cannot reach the telephone.

At the encouragement of a children’s book editor at Viking, Bemelmans began writing books in the 1930s and published Hansi in 1934. In 1938, he began inventing his most iconic character, inspired by a little girl he met while in the hospital for a cycling accident, and the next year he began to write Madeline on the back of a menu in Pete’s Tavern, a still-extant restaurant on Irving Place in Manhattan.  He published the book with Simon & Schuster in 1939 the week before World War II broke out.

“For me, Madeline is therapy in the dark hours,” Bemelmans wrote.  That therapy took place mainly in the bathtub, but he also wrote and drew while riding the train—or driving a car. Aware of the risk, he fastened a medallion of St. Christopher to his dashboard to keep himself safe. He designed the medallion himself, and his St. Christopher has Madeleine, the name of Bemelmans’s wife, tattooed on his arm.

The majority of the exhibit consists of full-sized paintings from the various Madeline books, the colors far more saturated and vibrant than they appear on the covers of the books themselves. “In Rain,” painted in 1939, shows the iconic two straight lines of little girls along with Miss Clavell. ‘They Left the House at Half Past Nine” shows the girls in a bright yellow world, “And Sometimes They Were Very Sad” shows them in a very gray space, pitying an injured policeman.  All the paintings display Bemelmans’s Matisse-like style: quick dark lines and saturated jewel-tones painted with gouache or watercolor.

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“And sometimes they were very sad,” 1939; from Madeline (Simon & Schuster, 1939); Watercolor and gouache; via the New-York Historical Society

 

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Cover for Madeline’s Rescue (The Viking Press, 1953); Gouache; via the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University,

 

“The drawing has to sit on the paper as if you smacked a spoon of whipped cream on a plate,” wrote Bemelmans, and most of his Madeline paintings do convey that kind of richness, immediacy, and silliness. His other work on display is less compelling.

In his later years, Bemelmans tried to turn from writing children’s books to producing more serious adult work—doing design work for hotels and running his own Paris bistro. His murals at the Carlyle are the only lasting results of these efforts.  While his sketches of “The Life of an Innkeeper” are amusing, his book about the hotel business lacks the staying power of Madeline.  One standout from this period is a series of drawings Bemelmans produced for a 1950 Town & Country memoir of his time at the old Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York.

 

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“By applying myself thoroughly to the study of kitchen and the cellar,” 1950
“Adieu to the Old Ritz,” Town & Country Magazine, Vol. 104, No.4339; via the New-York Historical Society

Museum-goers looking to see the arc of Bemelmans’s development or insights into his creative process will be mostly disappointed. In order to maximize his income, Bemelman first sold excerpts of his stories to magazines, next sold the finished book to a publisher, and finally sold full-sized versions of the illustrations through a friend’s gallery. As a result, he seems to have done more expanding than revising down of his work, and there are few discarded pieces on display. (He also didn’t recognize the value of his own sketches; Bemelman’s gallerist rescued one of the few rough sketches on display from being used for kindling by the artist.)

Bemelmans once wrote that children are “a clear-eyed, critical, and hungry audience of people, all of whom are impressionable themselves, who love my pictures and sometimes even eat them.”  Recognizing his wisdom, the Historical Society offers children’s teas as well as storytimes in the exhibition’s gallery, providing something besides paper for young readers’ nourishment. Clear-eyed and critical adults will have to fend for themselves: much as they may enjoy the large-scale paintings of their favorite illustrations, they'll leave wishing there had been more to digest.

 

“Madeline in New York: The Art of Ludwig Bemelmans” will be on view at the New York-Historical Society through Oct. 19.

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