Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard (September 13, 1803, Nancy, Meurthe-et-Moselle

Meurthe-et-Moselle

Meurthe-et-Moselle is a department in the Lorraine region of France, named after the Meurthe and Moselle rivers.- History :Meurthe-et-Moselle was created in 1871 at the end of the Franco-Prussian War from the parts of the former departments of Moselle and Meurthe which remained French...

 – March 17, 1847, Vanves

Vanves

Vanves is a commune in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris. It is one of the most densely populated municipalities in Europe and the tenth in France -History:...

), generally known by the pseudonym of J. J. Grandville, was a French caricaturist.

Life and work

He was born at Nancy, in northeastern France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, to an artistic and theatrical family. The name "Grandville" was his grandparents' professional stage name. Grandville received his first instruction in drawing from his father, a painter of miniatures. At the age of twenty-one he moved to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, and soon afterwards published a collection of lithographs entitled Les Tribulations de la petite proprieté. He followed this with Les Plaisirs de tout âge and La Sibylle des salons (1827); but the work which first established his fame was Les Métamorphoses du jour (1828–29), a series of seventy scenes in which individuals with the bodies of men and faces of animals are made to play a human comedy. These drawings are remarkable for the extraordinary skill with which human characteristics are represented in animal facial features.

The success of this work led to his being engaged as artistic contributor to various periodicals, such as Le Silhouette, L'Artiste, La Caricature, Le Charivari

Le Charivari

Le Charivari was an illustrated newspaper published in Paris, France from 1832 to 1937. It published caricatures, political cartoons and reviews...

; and his political caricatures which were characterized by marvelous fertility of satirical humour

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

, soon came to enjoy a general popularity.
After the reinstitution of prior censorship of caricature in 1835, Grandville turned almost exclusively to book illustration, supplying illustrations for various standard works, such as the songs of Béranger

Pierre-Jean de Béranger

Pierre-Jean de Béranger was a prolific French poet and chansonnier , who enjoyed great popularity and influence in France during his lifetime, but faded into obscurity in the decades following his death...

, the fables of La Fontaine, Don Quixote, Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels

Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver's Travels , is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of...

, Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...

. He also continued to issue various lithographic collections, among which may be mentioned La Vie privée et publique des animaux, Les Cent Proverbes, L'Autre Monde and Les Fleurs animées.

Though the designs of Grandville are occasionally unnatural and absurd, they usually display keen analysis of character and marvellous inventive ingenuity, and his humour is always tempered and refined by delicacy of sentiment and a vein of sober thoughtfulness. He died on March 17, 1847 and is buried in the Cimetière Nord of Saint-Mandé just outside Paris.

A short notice of Grandville appears in Théophile Gautier

Théophile Gautier

Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, art critic and literary critic....

's Portraits contemporains. See also Charles Blanc, Grandville (Paris, 1855).

Legacy

Grandville's ability for political provocation made his work much in demand. He worked in a wide variety of formats, from his first job illustrating the parlor game Old Maid, to illustrated newspaper strips of which he was a master. His illustrations for Le Diable à Paris ("The Devil In Paris"; 1844–46) were used by Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...

 for his study of that city as an urban organism. One of Grandville's supreme achievements, at a time when French printing technology was ascendant, was Les Fleurs Animées, a series of images that are both poetic and satirical. But perhaps his most original contribution to the illustrated book form was L'Autre Monde, which approaches the status of pure surrealism, despite being conceived in a pre-Freudian age. Leading members of the Surrealist movement such as André Breton

André Breton

André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....

 and Georges Bataille

Georges Bataille

Georges Bataille was a French writer. His multifaceted work is linked to the domains of literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art...

 recognised in Grandville a significant precursor and inspiration for the movement.
The rock band Queen

Queen (band)

Queen are a British rock band formed in London in 1971, originally consisting of Freddie Mercury , Brian May , John Deacon , and Roger Taylor...

 used part of his artwork for the cover and backcover of their 1991 album Innuendo

Innuendo (album)

Innuendo is the fourteenth studio album by British rock band Queen. Released in February 1991, it was the final studio album to be released in Freddie Mercury's lifetime and is the last to be composed entirely of new material...

, and Alice in Chains

Alice in Chains

Alice in Chains is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1987 by guitarist and songwriter Jerry Cantrell and original lead vocalist Layne Staley. The initial lineup was rounded out by drummer Sean Kinney, and bassist Mike Starr...

 used part of his artwork for their album Alice in Chains

Alice in Chains (album)

Alice in Chains is the eponymous third studio album by the American rock band Alice in Chains. Released on November 7, 1995, it was the follow-up to the highly successful Dirt...

.

The graphic novel Grandville

Grandville (comics)

Grandville is a British graphic novel series written and drawn by Bryan Talbot. It is a mixture of the steampunk, alternative history and thriller genres. It is set in a world in which France won the Napoleonic Wars and invaded Britain, and in which the world is populated mostly by anthropomorphic...

by Bryan Talbot

Bryan Talbot

Bryan Talbot is a British comic book artist and writer, born in Wigan, Lancashire, in 1952. He is best known as the creator of The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and its sequel Heart of Empire.-Career:...

was greatly inspired by Grandville's illustrations.

Gallery