Description
As a result of fabricated accounts endlessly repeated since his death, the early nineteenth-century French satirist, J. J.Grandville (180347), is often perceived as being as bizarre as his inventive protosurrealist imagery. With the recent bicentennial of his birth, it is time for a reassessment of this seminal artist based on primary sources. The Diary of J. J. Grandville and the Missouri Album: The Life of an Opposition Caricaturist and Romantic Book Illustrator in Paris under the July Monarchy by Clive F. Getty does just that. This first major study in English of Grandville allows him to speak for himself through a careful examination of his diary, fragments of which are to be found in a previously unexamined album of drawings in the Special Collections of the University of Missouri-Columbia Libraries.An introductory biography situates the artist within the political, social,and cultural climate of France during the Romantic era and the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe. The main body of the book consists of an annotated catalog of the albums drawings. Since the majority originate from his diaries, they provide valuable new insights into Grandville's life and work, particularly during those years most extensively represented: 1830, 1833, and 1846. An epilogue explores the genesis of the Missouri Album. The biography follows Grandville from his native Nancy to Paris where he first gained fame as a satirist with the human/ animal hybrids of Les Mtamorphoses du jour (182829). After the Revolution of 1830, he produced opposition caricatures for Philipons La Caricature, Le Charivari, and the Association mensuelle. With the establishment of press censorship in 1835, Grandville turned to book illustration, producing such innovative masterpiecesas Scnes de la vie prive et pub-liquedes animaux (1842) and Un autre monde (1844). The biography ends with the unusual circumstances of Grandville's death in 1847 and an analysis of the distorted accounts about the deceased artist and
