Pierre Bellocq

Background

As a small boy, his family moved to Maisons-Laffitte where his father worked at the local race track.

Career

There, at a young age Pierre Bellocq used his natural talent to begin creating caricatures of horses and horse people. At age 19, the French racing journal France Courses gave him national exposure when they published one of his cartoons of a jockey. Bellocq signed the drawing as "Peb", a signature which would become his lifelong moniker.

Within a few years Peb was widely known and an emerging artist who also gained recognition for his caricatures on sports advertising posters.

International Stakes. Pierre Bellocq has produced several books

His first consisted of 150 cartoons and was titled Peb"s Equine Comedy. lieutenant was published by Random House in 1957 and is still in print.

As well, he did the illustrations for the 1969 Joe Hirsch book A Treasury of Questions and Answers from the Morning Telegraph and Daily Racing Form.

In 2004, he created drawings for author Editor Hotaling"s book on jockey Jimmy Winkfield whom Bellocq had known personally when the African American rider was living and racing in his hometown of Maisons-Laffitte, France. Another Bellocq mural, in the clubhouse of Belmont Park in Elmont, New York, depicts the dominant jockeys, trainers and racing personalities of the track"s century-long history.

Achievements

• By 1954, Bellocq"s work had achieved international recognition and he was contracted by Laurel Park owner John D. Schapiro to do drawings for the inaugural running of the Washington, District of Columbia He received the National Cartoonists Society 1991 Sports Cartoon Award and their 1999 Newspaper Illustration Award. In 2001, when Churchill Downs began its major renovations, one of the additions to the clubhouse was a 36-foot mural by Pierre Bellocq depicting all 96 jockeys who had won the Kentucky Derby from 1875 to 2004.