Edgar Parin d’Aulaire

Ingri d’Aulaire (1904-1980) and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire (1898-1986) were American children’s book writers and illustrators who worked primarily in collaboration with each other.

Edgar Parin, a Swiss-born artist, was born in Munich, the son of Italian portrait artist Gino Parin and talented artist and musician Ella Auler (he later took a Frenchification of his mother’s maiden name). After studying architecture in Munich, he attended the School of Arts and Crafts, trained as a fresco painter in Florence, France, and Norway, and exhibited in Paris, Berlin, and Oslo. He illustrated numerous books in Germany between 1922 and 1926, and spent two years painting frescoes in Norway.

Ingri and Edgar met in Munich, where Ingri was studying painting. They married in 1925. After narrowly escaping death in a serious trolleybus collision in Paris, Edgar received a small insurance settlement that allowed him to move to the United States. There, he found himself in demand as an illustrator, and illustrated enough books to be able to bring his wife to America. In 1929, the couple moved to a small, unheated apartment in Brooklyn. At the beginning of their careers in America, they acted independently of each other – Edgar focused on book illustration, using wood engraving and stone lithography; Ingri earned money by drawing portraits.

On the advice of the then director of the New York Public Library, the couple decided to combine their talents, designed their first book together, The Magic Rug (1931), and began a successful collaboration.

Soon after, they became US citizens. They lived and worked in Wilton, Connecticut, from 1941 until their deaths.