Jean-Jacques Sempé was an unparalleled observer of the human condition

At the edge of the gigantic sea, his clothes left in a pile, his arms hugging his shivering body, a frail, tiny figure wondered whether to take the plunge. In an immense plain, under a huge black cloud, a woman in a sunhat furiously pedalled her bicycle, with its basket of precious vegetables, towards some distant home. Amid an infinity of fir trees two ant-size cyclists almost met, but their paths diverged before contact. In a landscape of rampaging lushness and glorious views a pipe-smoking painter worked at his easel. His human subject, insignificant in the long grass, called “Remember not to forget me!”