Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant (The Story of Babar), Maquette
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 the Heineman Fund, 2004
This is Jean de Brunhoff's first sketch for the memorable endpapers of Histoire de Babar, which depict a chain of elephants, linked trunk to tail, trekking in orderly fashion down the page. For the endpapers of the published book, he decided to eliminate the grassy background and introduce perspective, creating the illusion that the elephants are approaching the reader. This endpaper design was so successful that it has been used, with some variation in color and layout, in nearly all subsequent books in the series.
