[1] Pierre Soubeyran was the son of the locksmith Pierre Soubeyran, a Huguenot refugees from Sauve, Languedoc and his wife Pernette de Bourdeau.
Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui (1694-1748) encouraged him to train as etcher in Paris, where from 1742 to 1749 he was a member of the French Academy of Sciences.
At times, he also received lessons by Georg Friedrich Schmidt.
On 14 May 1748, he was appointed as Head of the Public Drawing School in Geneva, École de Dessein de Genève (later known as École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Genève).
[3][4] Soubeyran wrote the article "Montre" for the Encyclopédie by Denis Diderot and d’Alembert.