Pierre `Peb' Bellocq obit

Beloved Cartoonist Pierre `Peb' Bellocq Passes Away at 99

 

He was not on the list.

Pierre E. Bellocq, best known to his fans and readers of the Morning Telegraph and Daily Racing Form as Peb, passed away early Thursday morning at the Princeton, New Jersey Medical Center after a brief illness, just 13 days shy of his 100th birthday.

Bellocq was born in Bedenac, France on November 25, 1926. His father, Hilaire, was a steeplechase jockey; his grandfather was a trainer and his great-grandfather was a breeder. But Peb's gift was cartooning and he dabbled in drawing as a young child before taking it up as a profession in 1945.

Even under Nazi rule, racing continued around Paris, and Bellocq documented it both with his sketchbook and his camera. Nearly 80 years later, he shared a photograph he had taken during the occupation at Maisons-Laffitte racecourse showing his brother Louis, a leading jockey at the time, returning after a race with two uniformed German officers standing among the French crowd in the background. Peb remarked that despite the madness of the war and the presence of occupying forces, local racing fans still came out to put their burdens aside for a few hours and try to pick a winner.

With Peb's acclaim growing in France, he caught the attention of Laurel Race Course owner John D. Shapiro, who commissioned him to create logos, program covers and artwork for the inaugural Washington D.C. International in 1954. He arrived there on a cargo plane along with the international horses taking part in the race, finding bales of hay to rest on during the flight.

He was hired by the Morning Telegraph, the sister paper of the Daily Racing Form, in 1955 and his first cartoon for his new employer coincided with the opening day of Jamaica Racetrack. The Form and the Philadelphia Inquirer were both owned by Walter Annenberg at the time and Bellocq also took up the task of drawing political cartoons for the Inquirer. When Annenberg sold the Inquirer to Knight Ridder in the early seventies, the paper's new owners insisted that he choose between horse racing and politics. He chose horse racing.

What made Peb so unique and so popular was his ability to capture in a charming way the personalities of the horses and what might be going through their minds. On the morning after the ill-fated match race between Ruffian and Foolish Pleasure, he showed a saddened Foolish Pleasure wearing a Ruffian pin. He had said that one of his favorites was the front-page cartoon for the 2004 Belmont Stakes, where he linked Philadelphia legend Smarty Jones to Philadelphia legend Rocky Balboa. He drew 50 caricatures of Riva Ridge and Secretariat that explored their relationship on almost human terms.

He also captured the personalities of the people he sketched. Bob Baffert looked confident and just a little bit cooler than everyone else. Jack Van Berg was rough and gruff. Julie Krone was an imp.

“It's almost some kind of mystical thing to grasp the inner character of a person,” he said. “It's hard to explain. Naturally, you want to study the person and try to find out what motivates the person and what their character is and translate that into life. Some people are easy to draw. Some are not.”

Outside of his cartoons, he was commissioned to paint massive murals that captured the history and culture of racing. His most famous mural was the one that hung inside the clubhouse at Belmont Park. Another public mural, named The “Canvas of Stars,” was commissioned by horse owner Marlene Brody for her Gallagher's Steak House in New York City, depicting famous people of sport, politics and entertainment who enjoyed the famous restaurant over the years.

He released several books compiling his caricatures and equine humor, including Peb's Equine Comedy (1957), Peb 71 (1971), Peb at Keeneland (1986), Forty Years of Peb (1995), and Peb: The Art of Humor (2004).

Along the way, the awards kept rolling in. In 1980, he won a Special Eclipse Award for Outstanding Contributions to Racing. He received The Jockey Club Medal—a rare, non-annual distinction recognizing exceptional contributions to Thoroughbred racing and breeding—in 2016. In 2020, he was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame as part of the Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor. He was even recognized in France, 28 years after he left, receiving the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) in 1983. Awarded by the French government, the honor recognized his artistic contributions as part of France's premier cultural honors.

Peb also founded and then became the president of the Amateur Riders' Club of America, an organization that put together races for amateur jockeys who rode for the love of the sport and not for purse money.

Concluding a 53-year run at the Daily Racing Form in 2008, Peb he stayed active artistically. Soon thereafter, he became a regular contributor to the Thoroughbred Daily News. After he drew his last cartoon for the TDN, his son Remi followed in his father's footsteps with witty cartoons that also have an uncanny knack for capturing the true personalities of those he is drawing.

In 2005, at the age of 79, he was still undertaking major works of art, painting a mural at Churchill Downs. He later updated his mural at Belmont Park, painted a trainers' mural at Churchill, and was commissioned for another major work at Del Mar. Those murals serve as examples of his work available for public visitation.

“There will always only be one Peb and that's just not in the racing industry, but in cartooning in general,” Remi said. “People forget he was a hell of a political cartoonist also. The work he leaves behind, I'll let it speak for itself. I think that if I was trying to whittle it down, they say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, that really applies in this case. It was not just his incredible ability to do caricatures, which I don't even pretend to try to do. A lot of other really great cartoonists would say was that he really was phenomenal. He brought a sense of humor to the sport which really needs.

“He's irreplaceable,” Remi continued. “You can copy him, but you can't replace him. I can carry on the tradition and can only hope in my own way to fill that gap.”

In 2023, Peb and Remi joined the TDN Writers' Room Podcast. In the podcast, Peb explained how it all began for him.

“I always tried to copy from the newspapers,” he said. “When I was a kid, I was copying cartoons and it was my ambition to draw. I made albums of caricatures of politicians. I have albums full of those things. I had a great passion for that.”

“Working with Peb was undoubtedly my biggest professional honor,” said TDN publisher Sue Finley. “He had a huge impact on my decision to enter a career in racing. When I was a teenager, the New York Racing Association gave away a book of his Equine Comedy cartoons, and they drew me into that vivid world that he created. I decided it was a world I wanted to be a part of.”

Bellocq is survived by sons Remi; Pierre Bellocq Jr.; Denis; a daughter; Brigitte Toth, his wife Marie-Denise; and his stepdaughter Elisabeth; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by a daughter, Lise; and his first wife, Denise.

Services are yet to be determined.