People Watcher

"Being present at your own exhibit," Ludwig Bemelmans protested, "is like being called out of ranks during an Army physical inspection. It's embarrassing." Despite such protestations, Author-Artist Bemelmans had the time of his life in Houston last week. The Art League put on a special showing of 31 of his paintings, and hundreds of proper Houstonians turned out to see them.

As the visitors swarmed through the gallery, Bemelmans swarmed too. He chattered merrily, all but poured the punch. "Painting is fun," he told everyone. "But of course the most fun is selling the pictures." Houstonians took the hint. By the time Bemelmans pulled out of town in a new cowboy hat, at least seven of the canvases had been spoken for. One oilman's wife had offered him shares in a wildcat well (yet to be drilled) in exchange for a painting. "I'll swap oil for oil," bubbled Bemelmans.

All Play. To Austrian-born Ludwig Bemelmans, 53, all this was still a novelty, for until about a year ago, he had painted mostly to illustrate his writings. Then he came to the conclusion that he really hated to write ("I walk around a typewriter for hours with a cramp in my stomach"). Painting was different. "This is all play, you know. And I am now in a position where I can afford to play."

As Bemelmans tells it, his present state of ease is a great surprise to him. The grandson of a Bavarian brewer, he showed early signs of being the family flop. He never managed to get through school, failed miserably as an apprentice in his Uncle Hans's string of Tyrolean hotels. Finally, in desperation, his family sent him to the U.S., and there he started failing all over again.

He lost his first job as a bus boy at Manhattan's Hotel Astor because he broke too many dishes. The McAlpin fired him for reporting to duty in one white shoe and one yellow one. The Ritz suspended him for dropping an ambassador's breakfast tray. Only after he had served in the U.S. Army in World War I (he was an attendant at a Government insane asylum), did he begin to work steadily--first in the banquet department at the Ritz, and later as a writer and illustrator of such bestsellers as Hotel Splendide and Life Class.

All Gay. Today, Bemelmans has the look of a happy, well-fed burgomaster. " paint when I feel like it," he says. "I think pleasantly about a picture for a week sometimes, and then do it on the afternoon of the seventh day." He uses anything for a palette--a table, a folded newspaper or a plate. He mixes oil and water colors according to whim. "The purpose of art," says he, "is to console and amuse--myself, and I hope, others."

Houston's verdict was that Bemelmans' art lives up to the Bemelmans purpose. The paintings in the show were done mostly in France and Italy--a world of squiggly churches, toyland villages and sunlit harbors, all as gay as a crazy quilt. But Bemelmans' own favorites are his paintings of people in restaurants. "A restaurant," says he, "is a refuge. I sit there floating with a bottle of wine and silently observe. Instead of a bird watcher, I am a people watcher."

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