Early life[edit]

Sempé was born on 17 August 1932 in Pessac, near Bordeaux to a single mother.^[2][3] He was first raised by foster parents, but then his mother took him back in; she lived with his alcoholic stepfather, and the child experienced violence at home.^[4] He was expelled from school as a young man, and then failed to pass exams for the post office, a bank and the railways.^[5] He then found work selling tooth powder as a door-to-door salesman^[5] and also worked delivering wine by bicycle in the Gironde.^[6]

After lying about his age, he joined the French Army in 1950, since it was "the only place that would give me a job and a bed", he subsequently explained, and would occasionally get into trouble for drawing while he was supposed to be keeping watch during guard duty.^[5] Upon being disciplined for one such occurrence, his real age was discovered and he was subsequently discharged.^[2] He then moved to Paris and began working with René Goscinny.^[5] Sempé spent most of his life in Paris's Saint-Germain-des-Prés district.^[6][7]

His career started in France within the context of the Franco-Belgian comics industry. His "mute" watercolours or single image sketches, where the characters speak in pictures or not at all (but somehow manage to convey a rich story) slowly gained international attention. He won his first award in 1952 which is given to encourage young amateur artists to turn professional.^[2]

Sempé's full page cartoons appeared in Paris Match for many years.^[1] In the 1950s, Sempé became a friend of René Goscinny who would later create Asterix. Together, they invented the character "Little Nicolas" in 1959.^[4][8] Le Petit Nicolas appeared from 1954 in Le Moustique and Sempé drew upon childhood influences and memories to illustrate the comic. In 1960, the comic Le Petit Nicolas was published in Pilote magazine. It was at the time unusual modern children's literature given that it is centred on the experience of the child, rather than an adult interpretation of the world. In general, Sempé rarely drew from life, drawing something every day, putting sketches aside when he got bored with them.^[1]

His work has appeared as the cover of The New Yorker magazine from 1978,^[1] more than a hundred times.^[9] He illustrated Süskind's 1991 novella Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer.^[7] Le Petit Nicolas was translated into 30 languages.^[3] A translation of his drawings into English, by Anthea Bell, was published in four volumes in 2006: Nothing is Simple (1962), Everything is Complicated (1963), Sunny Spells (1999) and Mixed Messages (2003).^[1] On the occasion of his 80th birthday, the Wilhelm Busch Museum held an exhibition of his work in 2012.^[7]

Based on the drawings from Sempé in the series Le Petit Nicholas, the animated film Little Nicholas: Happy As Can Be in 2022 is as a beautiful homage to Sempé and Goscinny.^[10]