GERARD, JEAN-IGNACE-ISIDORE, but best known by his pseudonym, GRANDVILLE, one of the most eminent French carica turists and designers of illustrations for books, was born at Nancy in 1803. He went to Paris young, an adventurer without money, and without friends ; after awhile got admission to the atelier of Lecomto; managed to subsist by designing costumes, &c. ; then advanced to snaking lithographic drawings ; and continued improving his artistic powers and increasing his stores of observation till 1828, when he brought out his 'Metamorphoses du Jour,' by Grandville, a series of genial, piquant, and mirthful crayon commentaries and criticisms on passing follies. These sketches bad a prodigious success; Grand ville'a position was secured ; and his pencil found abundant em ployment. The revolution of 1830 interfered for a time with his occupation ; but when familiarity had brought its inseparable attendant, and the citizen king had come to be regarded by the citizens as a fair mark for the shafts of ridicule, Grandville made himself abundantly merry with the face and person of his sovereign and the royal advisers. Grandville was tho very soul of La Carica ture' as long as his pencil was permitted its free exercise; but on the promulgation of the law re-establishing the censure prealable ' for designs, ho abandoned politics, and threw all his energy into the snaking of drawings on wood for illustrated editions of classic authors, &c. here ho found a new field of triumph. Ilis drawings were in their way almost the perfection of designs for engraving on wood. Not merely were they admirably conceived, and excellent as exemplifi cations of the passages they were intended to illustrate, but clear, correct, and vigorous in drawing, and brilliant in effect, they exhibited remarkable aptitude for that particular kind of engraving. As illua
trations—full of fancy, ingenuity, quaint and genuine humour, and singularly not only pleased the eye, but really added a new charm to the text. Among the works Ise illustrated were Gulliver's Travels,' ' Robinson Crusoe,' La Fontaine's Fables,' 'Beranger," Jerome Paturot,' &c. Indefatigable in labour, he pro duced an almost infinite number of designs, and yet his active fancy showed no symptoms of exhaustion or even fatigue, But in the midst of his success, and in the very prime of his powers, his labours were brought to a sad and sudden termination. A man of domestic habits, and devotedly fond of his family, he had already had the misfortune to lose two children within a brief space of time by some of the ordinary maladies of childhood, when his third child in attempting to swallow a piece of meat got it so firmly fixed in its throat that all attempts to remove it proved unavailing. An incision was proposed as the only remaining though dangerous remedy ; and while Grandville hesitated whether to consent to the operation, the child died in his arms. The shock was more than the unhappy father could sustain: his intellect gave way, and he survived his child but a short period. He died on the 17th of March 1847, aged forty-three.