A Maison for Madeline in Westerly
The famous children's book heroine has a new permanent address at the Ocean House.
The Bemelmans Gallery at the Ocean House has more than 100 pieces of art. Photography courtesy of the Ocean House.
Madeline feared not mice, nor tigers. The war that began the year of her debut did not touch her Paris. And in this richly colored world, a tiny redhead in a big yellow hat leads a charmed childhood at a boarding school, with a rich Papa and a governess who never leaves her.
This was not at all like the childhood of Ludwig Bemelmans, the artist and author who introduced Madeline to young readers in 1939 and secured her place among the plucky heroines of children’s literature with seven books.
Rhode Islanders can now trace Bemelmans’ artistic career with a visit to the lower lobby of the Ocean House in Westerly, where hoteliers Chuck and Deborah Royce have installed more than 100 of his works in a permanent free exhibit. The Bemelmans Gallery includes Madeline illustrations, architectural drawings and murals of cafe society, all rendered in his familiar liquid line. For considerably more, you can book a stay in the Bemelmans Suite, where his images festoon the walls, pillows and lampshades.
“There is no other place in the world that is exhibiting the life work of Ludwig Bemelmans, where you can see examples of every aspect of his art,” says curator Hilary Pierce.
Photography courtesy of the Ocean House.
Bemelmans was born in 1898. His father, artist Lampert Bemelmans, operated a hotel in the Austrian town of Gmunden, where Ludwig wandered under the watchful eye of his French nanny, “Gazelle.” He was six when Lampert ran off with another woman, leaving both his wife, Franciska, and Gazelle pregnant. The latter took her own life; Franciska moved the family to her native Germany.
Bemelmans chafed under German orderliness and discipline in school and at the hotel his uncle Hans operated. Depending on which story you believe, sixteen-year-old Ludwig either shot an abusive head waiter or was simply uncontrollable, and thus Hans offered his nephew a choice: reform school or America.
He spent the next twenty-five years working in restaurants and New York hotels — including the Ritz-Carlton. Bemelmans fashioned art out of his peripatetic life: He modeled his most famous creation on a little redhead he met in a French hospital after a cycling accident. His mother’s stories of attending a convent school became the “old house in Paris covered in vines.” He sketched the cooks and waiters he knew and the patrons he served.
Photography courtesy of the Ocean House.
More than twenty years ago, the Royces began to pick up the pieces of his ouevre wherever they lay: preliminary sketches from the estate of his illustration collaborator Ervine Metzl, architectural drawings espied in the window of Bergdorf Goodman, and murals from the children’s dining room of Aristotle Onassis’ yacht, the Christina O.
There is no more appropriate display space for this collection than a five-star hotel.
“It’s almost like it was divinely ordered,” says Pierce. “The Royces are very unique hoteliers, and the Ocean House is one of the last grand hotels. That is very much like a place that Bemelmans would enjoy staying, and now he’s a permanent guest.” oceanhouseri.com
