Babar and Céleste at the Circus · Le voyage de Babar · Jean de Brunhoff Babar Print

Babar and Céleste at the Circus - an original watercolour from Jean de Brunhoff's Le voyage de Babar, 1932.

Reproduced from the original watercolour, with the paper, pencil notes and handwriting left as he painted them.

Le voyage de Babar, the second book, sends the newly married Babar and Céleste off on their honeymoon by balloon: over the sea, to an island, onto the back of a whale, aboard an ocean liner and into a circus, before they find their way home. These are Brunhoff's own finished watercolours for the book, painted on the sheet with his handwritten text beneath.

Jean de Brunhoff (1899-1937) was a Paris painter who invented Babar from a bedtime story his wife Cécile told their two young sons. He painted the first book, Histoire de Babar, in 1931, and six more followed, the last two published after his death at 37. Printed large, in the generous album format he chose, with his own handwriting in place of type, they became some of the best-loved picture books ever made.

Taken from a high-resolution scan of an original page, cleaned of dust and scanning marks but otherwise left as Brunhoff made it. Made to order on heavyweight cotton-fibre archival paper and sold at a single size, mounted with an equal border all round and framed in-house.