Pierre Joubert

Born in 1910 on Saint-André-des-Arts Street in Paris, he left mainstream education at the age of 14 to enroll at the School of Applied Arts, which published his first sketches. Around the same period, he discovered the Scout Movement and began drawing his Scout troop. That is how he was spotted by the magazine Scout de France, which published his first artworks and for which he would work for over thirty years. During his military service, which he undertook in Strasbourg, he witnessed the creation of the Signe de Piste (Trail Sign) series and began drawing their covers, before becoming their principal illustrator – a role he would hold for fifty years. In the 1950s, Marabout Publishers commissioned him to work on the ‘Marabout Junior’ series, for which Pierre Joubert illustrated the covers of historical and adventure novels, including the famous Bob Morane. He created the character’s silhouette and drew over a hundred of his adventures, as well as the covers of more than 300 other novels in the series right up until the 1970s. 

Fascinated by history and the maritime world, he collaborated on books about The History of Mont Saint-Michel, The History of Sailing Ships, Sailors’ Songs and five volumes in the La Vie privée des hommes (The Private Lives of Men) collection, as well as Rimbaud’s poems. He also contributed to the Grand Dictionnaire de l’Histoire de France by illustrating military uniforms, and subsequently to the encyclopaedia La Vie privée des Hommes.

By the time of his death on 13 January 2002, he had produced a prolific body of work comprising over 15,000 drawings.