Ludwig Bemelmans

Ludwig Bemelmans (1898 – 1962) Grew up in Austria before moving to the United States in 1914. He spent his early years working at hotels alongside his father. He began his writing career in the 1930’s with his first Madeline book published by 1939. Working primarily with ink, watercolor, and gouache, Bemelmans crafted the impressionist, gestural world of Madeline. Bemelmans received Caldecott Honors for Madeline, and the sequel, Madeline’s Rescue, won the Caldecott Medal in 1954

“Writing is always a dreadful, tiresome business and the worst of all tortures for me, because I am convinced that I am not a writer but a graphic workman, a painter who hangs pictures in a row, who collects imagery, and my problem is always to find one for a beginning and one for an end and then, something to hang in the middle so that it resembles a book,” – Ludwig Bemelmans