Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard Grandville

Grandville, Self-portrait (ca. 1820–22), pen-and-ink

Jean Ignace Isidore Gerard, "Grandville", was born on September 15, 1803, in Nancy, Meurthe-et-Moselle, in northeastern France. His parents called him Adolphe, a name that originated from an older brother who had died three months before Grandville was born, and a name that followed him through the rest of his life. His father, Jean-Baptiste Gérard, was a noted painter of miniatures. He inherited his father's talent and exhibited an aptitude for drawing at an early age. He received his earliest education in art from his father and several authors have noted his father's influence on his draftsmanship and dense compositions, even in his mature work. Another painter of miniatures and lithographer, Léon-André Larue, called Mansion, was a relative who encouraged Grandville to go to Paris and learn lithography. Lithography had only recently been invented in Germany in the 1790s and was rapidly gaining popularity in Paris as a fast and cheep alternative to engraving and etching, for mass-producing prints and illustrated publications. In a period of social and political turmoil, inexpensive illustrated newspapers were coming into vogue, and opportunities for draftsmen and illustrators were also on the rise among the publishers and lithography studios in Paris at that time. Grandville was drawn to and influenced by the satirical prints, caricatures, and illustrations (often political) that were growing in popularity in France. Sources differ on the exact year and age, but after completing school, ca. 1923[4]-1825,[5] Grandville moved to Paris and began pursuing a career in illustration and lithography. One account states his first lithograph titled La Marchande de cerises (The Cherry Seller), was published in Nancy 1824 or 1825.[5][6][7]

Grandville's parents had friends and family in Paris working in the theater who provided work and connections early on, including a relative, Frédéric Lemétheyer, who was a stage manager in the Opéra-Comique. He began using his pseudonym, "Grandville" in Paris. It was derived from “Gérard de Grandville”, his paternal grandparents stage name when they were actors and worked in the court of Lorraine. The pseudonym Grandville appeared in several variations throughout his career, including Jean Ignace Isidore Grandville, Jean-Jacques Granville, Jean de Granville, J. J. Grandville, J. I. I. Grandville, and Grandville. He designed illustrations for decks of playing cards and worked with Hippolyte Lecomte, a painter and ballet set designer in Paris, for whom he produced a set of color lithographs Costumes De Théãter in 1826. That set was followed by additional series including 12 lithographs created for the printer Langlumé titled Les Dimanches d’un bourgeois de Paris ou Les tribulations de la petite propriété (Sundays of a Paris Bourgeois or The Tribulations of Small Property), in 1826. Subsequent collections included 53 prints in La Sibylle des salons (The Sibyl of the Salons) in 1827 and 12 prints in Titres pour morceaux de musique (Titles for Musical Pieces) in 1828.[5][6][7]

Voyage pour L'éternite, No. 6: Would you like to go up to my place, my little sir, You will not be disappointed! (1830), hand-colored lithograph, alluding to syphilis.

Grandville lived a bohemian life in the late 1820s and early 1830s, renting in a small room on the upper floor of a building which is said to have been crowded with pens and papers where he drew incessantly. It became a gathering place for artist, writers, singers, lithographers and others. The painter Paul Delaroche was a neighbor during this period. Alexandre Dumas was among the milieu and later wrote of the time, "If we had money, we had beer. If not, we were happy just to smoke, joke and argue." Grandville was described as a thin, somewhat quite, and at times melancholy man, although Dumas noted he also had a sharp wit and a competitive side to him. It was in this period that he met the charismatic 28 year old Charles Philipon, an editor and lithographer with the newspaper La Silhouette.[1]

Grandville's first real success was Les Métamorphoses du jour (The Metamorphoses of the Day), a set of 70 color lithographs published in 1829. In this series, figures with human bodies but the heads of various animals, from fish to elephants, are depicted acting out a human comedy, perceptively satirizing the bourgeois of Paris and human nature in general. It established his reputation with the public and he was thereafter sought after as an illustrator by publishers and periodicals.[6][7] In 1830 he published Voyage pour l'éternité (Voyage to Eternity), a series of nine lithographs in which death, in the form of a variously dressed skeleton, pays visits to a variety of Parisians, and is finally seen triumphantly leading a parade of young soldiers to their fate. Printing was stopped after only few copies were made due to the dark theme, which was possibly inspired by Thomas Rowlandson's Dance of Death. However, it did succeed in gaining him more notoriety and the admiration of a few such as Champfleury and Honoré de Balzac.[5]

Les Métamorphoses du jour (1829), color lithographs

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  No. 2: Attends Attends! petit matou (Wait wait! little cat).
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  No. 23: L'attente d'un convive (Waiting for a guest)
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  No. 43: Voulez-vous déjeuner avec nous, la mére Pilon? (Would you like to have lunch with us, mother Pilon?)
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  No. 46: Une vilaine commission (An Ugly Delegation)
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  No. 52: Temps de canicule (A Heatwave)

Balzac and the Characters of the Human Comedy. Pen drawing for a fan project (Maison de Balzac, Paris).

In the French Revolution of 1830, the "Three Glorious Days" (July 27–29) saw the liberal, republican, working class of Paris fighting in the streets to bring down the Bourbon monarch Charles X, who was replaced by his more liberally minded cousin Louis Philippe I. These same republican, workers where rapidly marginalized as the bourgeoisie appropriated the social, economic, and political gains of the revolution to their own ends. Alexandre Dumas is known to have fought with the workers and it is possible that Grandville and others in his circle participated in the fighting as well. Several satirical republican periodicals begin to emerge in Paris at this time, including La Silhouette, Tribune, La Caricature, L'Artiste, Le Charivari, Corsaire, Réformateur, Bon Sens, Populaire, and others. These papers were often political, provocative, and pressed the issue that the workers had been pivotal in bringing Louis Philippe to power, but were now dismissed by the new monarchy. [8]

The success of Grandville's previous lithographic series led to invitations to design cartoons for these papers. The first of these was the satirical paper La Silhouette where his friend Charles Philipon was working as an editor. Grandville's lithograph Let's Put Out the Light and Rekindle the Fire! ("the light" of the Enlightenment and "the fire" of book-burning), criticizing censorship of the press, was published in June 1830 and quickly proscribed by the government.[9] La Silhouette had a short run (Dec. 1829 – Jan. 1831), folding after the administration's fines and pressure.[8] It was only one in a succession of papers of similar content, many of which buckled under government pressure, and in some cases the same editors, writers, and illustrators moved from one paper to the next.[1]

Oh!! These nasty flies!! (c. 1835): Grandville produced this picture of himself in response to threats from the police regarding his cartoons.

Before La Silhouette closed, Charles Philipon and Auguste Audibert founded La Caricature in 1830, with Honoré de Balzac as a literary editor and Grandville, Achille Devéria, Honoré Daumier, Edme Jean Pigal, Auguste Raffet, and Charles-Joseph Traviès de Villers as cartoonist and lithographers.[8] As one author put it "From 1830 to 1835 Philipon and La Caricature waged all-out war against Louis-Philippe."[1] As part of this "war" Grandville designed numerous prints, including multi-part lithographs published over a period of weeks that collectors could piece together into one, e.g. the seven part Grande Croisade contre la Liberté (The Great Crusade Against Liberty) and La Chasse à la Liberté (The Hunters in Pursuit of Liberty). These attacks on monarchy were taken seriously and were not without consequences. Louis Philippe's regime seized papers, levied fines, and sent editors, writes, and illustrators to prison. Daumier was fined 500 francs and spent six months in prison in 1832. Charles Philipon received even greater fines and longer prison terms as did other publishers. Grandville endured persistent harassment from the police, including searches, and one incident described as a mugging in his own building by thuggish policemen, foiled by a neighbor who confronted them with pistols. He is said to have been deeply distressed by these events. Grandville filed criminal charges asserting the police had entered his residence by force, and he later published a lithograph Oh!! Les vilaines mouches!! Philipon organized L'Association Mensuelle lithographique which offered fine prints to its members in the early 1830s. Grandville produced over half the prints, with the profits going to pay the paper's fines.[1][5]

New-Year's Gifts for the People (1833), pen and ink

As La Caricature was collapsing, Philipon launched yet another review, Le Charivari in 1832, in which political attacks were more subtle, oblique, and veiled and the cartoons often addressed broader, less political, social satire.[5] Grandville, Philipon, and Daumier, achieved a level of celebrity status among factions of the public, as much for their defiant opposition as their cartoons. His political cartoons enjoyed great popularity with the public and were held in high regard by many.[7] Publishers and editors such as Edouard Charton of Le magasin pittoresque, as gave Grandville the freedom to choose his own subjects and create his images.[9]

The business of caricaturing was financially tenuous. The papers typically paid cartoonist by the print and artist considered themselves lucky to receive a contract for drawing on a regular basis. Grandville had made his earlier lithographs himself, but after he started producing cartoons for the periodicals about 1831, and his later book illustrations, he typically turned his original drawings over to publishers who had lithographers and woodcut engravers copy his images for printing. Color was added in colorist studios, almost always women, who applied watercolor or gouache by hand, following notes supplied by the artists.[1][9]

The "Fieschi attentat", an unsuccessful assassination attempt on King Louis Philippe occurred on July 28, 1835, the fifth anniversary of the July Revolution. The September Laws soon followed, with censorship of the press and significantly longer prison sentences for publishing criticisms of the king and his administration. Caricatures required approval from the government before they were published and the press was forbidden to report on trials involving the press.[1][10]

Political lithographs (1830-1835)

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  Resurrection of Censorship (1832), La Caricature, No. 62, 21.7 x 26.5 cm..
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  Digestion of the Budget: Administrative, Political, Moral and above all Economic Work (1832), La Caricature, No. 82, 16.7 x 31 cm.
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  The People Delivered to the Vampire Taxes (1833), L'Association Mensuelle No. 10, 23.4 x 33.7 cm.
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  French Government Attack on the Freedom of the Printing Press (1833), La Caricature, 35.4 x 53.3 cm.
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  Gifts to the People (1833), La Caricature, No. 113, 23.4 x 20.4.

Water lily (1846), from Les fleurs animées (Animated Flowers or Flowers Personified)

At the outbreak of the July Revolution of 1830, Grandville was a 26 year old bachelor living a bohemian life. By the time the September Laws were passed in 1835, he was a 31 year old husband, and a father. He quit producing political cartoons after the September Laws and turned to illustrating books. It has been postulated that he was relieved and even happy to leave the politics and police harassment behind at this point in his life. In July 1833 he married a cousin from Nancy, Marguerite Henriette Fischer and the couple maintained an apartment close to his studio, and rented a house near the outskirts of town.[1][11] In 1834 their first son Ferdinand was born. A second son, Henri, was born in fall of 1838, but tragedy soon struck the family. Marguerite;s health is said to have declined with each birth and Ferdinand died of meningitis about the time Henri was born. In 1841 Henri chocked to death on a piece of bread while his parents helplessly watched. A third son, Georges, was born in July 1842 but, Marguerite died of peritonitis later that month. Grandville remarried in October 1843 to Catherine Marceline Lhuillier (1819-1888) who was the mother of his fourth son Armand, born in 1845. One source states that from her deathbed, his first wife Marguerite, had a hand in selecting Catherine as a second wife and stepmother for her husband and son.[1][5][6]

The first major undertaking in book illustration that Grandville undertook was a volume of song lyrics by the popular French songwriter Pierre-Jean de Béranger, first published with 38 wood engravings in 1835, and an expanded edition with 100 engravings in 1837.[5] This was followed by several volumes of classic literature, including as La Fontaine's Fables, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Boccaccio's The Decameron, and Cervantes's Don Quixote. While his illustrations for classic prose include some fine, if conventional illustrations, they did not provide him with the opportunity to give free range to his imagination.[9] He had a greater affinity for children's literature, that shows in his illustration for La Fontaine Fables, and later the Fables of Lavalette and Florian, collectively ranking among his finest work. He made a series of drawings for Perrault's Little Red Riding Hood but these were not published.[11] Grandville adapted and refined his style in switching from cartoons to book illustrations, which coinciding with the evolving printing technology and a shift from lithography to wood engraving. Previously, illustrations were typically printed on separate pages that were inserted into the text. With end-cut wood engravings, fine detail could be achieved on the hard end grain of wooden blocks, that could then be placed with the typographical blocks and printed on the same page with the text, lowering cost, and increasing the speed and quality of illustrated texts.[1][8]

Book illustrations (after 1836) wood engravings

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  The Good Pope, Complete Works of Béranger (1836)
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  The Good God, Complete Works of Béranger (1836)
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  Giants look at Gulliver, Gulliver's Travels (1838)
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  Gulliver pulling the fleet, Gulliver's Travels (1838)
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  My journey began, Robinson Crusoe (1840)
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  At the foot of the hill, Robinson Crusoe (1840)
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  The Carp and the Carpillons, Fables de Florian (1842)
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  The Viper and the Leech, Fables de Florian (1842)
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  Don Quixote's fight with the red wine skins (1847)

By the early 1840s, Grandville was increasingly illustrating books that were centered around his images. Working in collaboration with publishers and contemporary Parisian writers, he was at times given free regain of his imagination and the images. He produced about one book a year, his name often appearing before the authors on the title page, in which his illustrations were equally as important as the text, if not the main focus of the book.[8] Not surprisingly some of his finest work and that for which he is best remembered today appeared in this period. Most of the authors he worked with had some past connections or background with the radical press of the early 1830s. The first was Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux (Scenes of the Private and Public Life of Animals), a satirical compilation of articles and short stories, first published in serial form over a couple of years, then in a two volume set in 1842, with 320 wood engravings by Grandville. Multiple authors contributed to the books including Honoré de Balzac, Louis-François L'Héritier, Alfred de Musset, Paul de Musset, Charles Nodier, and Louis Viardot.[1]

A posthumous portrait of Grandville by Pierre-Gustave Staal (ca. 1850), engraving, 28.4 x 19 cm.

This was followed by Petites misères de la vie humaine (Little Miseries of Human Life) in 1843, with text by Paul-Émile Daurand-Forgues, a contributor to Le Charivari who sometimes published under the pseudonym "Old Nick". Old Nick also coauthored Cent proverbes: têxte par trois Tetes dans un bonnet (One Hundred Proverbs: Text by Three Heads in a Bonnet) with Taxile Delord and Louis Amédée Achard in 1845. Taxile Delord provided the text for Un autre monde (Another World) in 1844, regarded by many as Grandville's masterpiece and ironically the least successful volume in his lifetime.[9] Delord, a writer and critic who was editor-in-chief of Le Charivari and later entered French politics, also wrote Les fleurs animées (Animated Flowers or Flowers Personified), completed in 1846 and published posthumously.[6] Jérôme Paturot à la recherche d’une position sociale (Jérôme Paturot in Search of a Social Position), a social satire by Marie Roch Louis Reybaud published in 1846 and a great success, was the last book completed and published in his lifetime.[1][5]

A romanticized myth emerged around Grandville's death that persisted for 150 years or more. Traditional accounts asserted Grandville's bazaar imagery was symptomatic of a disturbed mind, and the death of his family left him gray-haired and hunchbacked by the time he was forty, ultimately sending him over the edge into madness, and he died in an insane asylum.[3][6] However, recent scholarship does not support this tale. In the days and weeks before his death Grandville was still producing some of his finest drawings, such as Crime and Expiation, and his correspondence with publishers reflect a clear and rational mind anticipating future projects.[1] By all accounts the sudden illness and death of his third son George affected him deeply, some saying this occurred "around late 1846 or early 1847",[5] others place it only three days before his own death.[6] On March 1, 1847, Grandville begin suffering from a sore throat and his condition progressively deteriorated over the following weeks. It has been speculated he had diphtheria. He was eventually taken to a private clinic, 8 Maison de Santé in Vanves, where Felix Voisin and Jean-Pierre Falret, two innovative psychiatrists worked. He died there on March 17, 1847 and was buried in the Cimetière Nord of Saint-Mandé of Paris next to his first wife and three sons. The artist wrote his own epitaph, translations vary: "Here lies Grandville; he loved everything, made everything live, speak, and walk, but he could not make a way for himself."[5] or "Here lies J. J. Grandville. He could bring anything to life and, like God, he made it live, talk and walk. Only one thing eluded him: how to live a life of his own."[1][7]

Later work (1840s), wood engravings

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  The Garden of Beast: from Scènes de la vie des animaux (1842)
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  He spins his cocoon and buries in a book: Scènes de la vie des animaux
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  Follow me! said a voice, my bad side no doubt: Scènes de la vie des animaux
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  Frontispiece: from Petites misères de la vie humaine (1843)
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  Gallery of Horrors: from Petites misères de la vie humaine
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  The Nightmare: from Petites misères de la vie humaine
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  Fools invent fashions, and the wise follow: from Cent Proverbes (1845)
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  For the money the dogs dance: from Cent Proverbes
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  All that glitters is not gold: from Cent Proverbes