Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard (; 13 September 1803 – 17 March 1847) was a prolific French illustrator and caricaturist who published under the pseudonym of Grandville (), and numerous variations (e. g. Jean-Jacques Grandville, Jean Ignace Isidore Grandville) throughout his career. Art historians and critics have called him "the first star of French caricature's great age",Rose, Cynthia. 2020. J. J. Grandville: A Matter of Line and Death. The Comics Journal. (accessed 6 July 2022) and described his illustrations as featuring "elements of the symbolic, dreamlike, and incongruous" while retaining a sense of social commentary,Hansen, Kelli. 2014. Weird and Wonderful Images from Artist J.J. Grandville. University of Missouri Library, Special Collections. (accessed 6 July 2022) and "the strangest and most pernicious transfigurement of the human shape ever produced by the Romantic imagination".Claudon, Francis. 1980. The Concise Encyclopedia of Romanticism. Chartwell Books, Inc. Secaucus, N. J.304 pp. (pages 87-88) The anthropomorphic vegetables and zoomorphic figures that populated his cartoons anticipated and influenced the work of generations of cartoonists and illustrators from John Tenniel, to Gustave Doré, to Félicien Rops, and Walt Disney. He has also been called a "proto-surrealist" and was greatly admired by André Breton and others in the movement.
Grandville was born in 1803, in Nancy, France into a family of artist and actors and received his earliest instruction in drawing from his father. He moved to Paris about 1823–1825 and began designing illustrations. His reputation was established in 1829 when he published a set of 70 lithographs titled Les Métamorphoses du jour. During the July Revolution of 1830 and the turbulent years that followed, he worked with Honoré Daumier and others producing provocative political cartoons for periodicals that were highly critical of the new monarchy of Louis Philippe I. After strict censorship laws were passed and threats from the police in 1835, Grandville turned to book illustration. He illustrated several classics such as La Fontaine's Fables, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and Cervantes's Don Quixote. In later years his books were increasingly centered around his illustrations, with the text written for his images e.g. (1844), (1845), and (1846). Grandville typically made drawings for publishers that were later copied into lithographs and woodcuts by professional engravers, only occasionally did he make his own prints.
He married his cousin Marguerite Henriette Fischer in 1833 and they had three sons, but Marguerite and all three sons predeceased him, all on separate occasions. He remarried in 1843 to Catherine Marceline "Céline" Lhuillier and they had one son, Armand in 1845. Traditional accounts say that he went mad and died in an insane asylum; however, recent authors say that although the hospital where he died in Paris, Maison de Santé in Vanves, did treat the mentally ill among other illnesses, he was not "mad" and likely died of a throat infection, possibly diphtheria.
Life Early life: 1803–1830
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 cheap 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, c. 1823Passeron, René. 1975. The Concise Encyclopedia of Surrealism. Chartwell Books, Inc. Secaucus, N. J.288 pp. (page 99) –1825,Melot, Michel. 2007. Grandeville, J. J. encyclopedia.com. (accessed July 2, 2022) 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.Manty, Kris. 2020. The Wonderfully Odd World of French Artist J. J. Grandville. antiquetrader.com (accessed July 2, 2022)
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 numerous variations throughout his career, including Grandville, Jean-Jacques Granville, J. J. Grandville, Jean Ignace Isidore Grandville, J. I. I. Grandville, Jean de Granville, and other variants. 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 in 1826. That set was followed by additional series including 12 lithographs created for the printer Langlumé titled (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 (Titles for Musical Pieces) in 1828.
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 quiet, 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.
Grandville's first real success was (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. In 1830 he published (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.
(1829), color lithographs
The French Revolution of 1830: 1830–1835
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 were 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.Melot, Michel. 1984. The Art of Illustration. Edition d'Art Albert Skira/Rizzoli International Publishing. New York, N. Y. 269 pp. (pages 148–158)
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.Mainardi, Patricia 2018. Grandville, Visions, and Dreams. The Public Domain Review (accessed 2022) La Silhouette had a short run (December 1829 – January 1831), folding after the administration's fines and pressure. 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.
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. As one author put it "From 1830 to 1835 Philipon and La Caricature waged all-out war against Louis-Philippe." 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 (The Great Crusade Against Liberty) and (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, writers, 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!!(Oh!! These nasty flies!! ) 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.