The Carlyle Bemelmans Bar Murals on the Upper East Side of New York City is synonymous with Madeline, of course, is the heroine of the children’s books by Ludwig Bemelmans, the German-born artist who also painted the walls of this bar, and she is here in her blue coat and big white hat on the wall at the far side of the bar, along with her gang of fellow French schoolgirls. As each of the six stories, published between 1939 and 1961, begins: “In an old house in Paris, that was covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines … the smallest one was Madeline.”

Robert Huyot, the French-born general manager of the Carlyle in the ’40s, was friends with Bemelmans and asked him to paint the new bar in exchange for rooms at the hotel. (Bemelmans and his family lived there for 18 months — not a bad deal.) The bar was named for the artist and has been iconic since it opened in 1947. Although Bemelmans consulted with Huyot, he was given free rein to paint what he liked, and so he depicted Central Park across four seasons and included Madeline (perhaps, in Bemelmans’s mind, she is visiting New York from Paris). There are animals, too, gamboling in the park — the indolent elephant with a parasol, the raffish bunny in a boater, a family of giraffes — all of it a gloss on the uptown social scene, whimsical, charming, with a tiny spritz of irony, like the Vermouth in your gin.

свернуть