The wonderful, odd world of J. J. Grandville

The famous French poet, Charles Baudelaire, who wrote essays about the major caricaturists and illustrators of his day, said that French artist J. J. Grandville frightened him.

In an essay published in Écrits sur l’art in 1857, Baudelaire wrote, “There are superficial people whom Grandville amuses, but as for me, he frightens me. When I enter into Grandville’s work, I feel a certain discomfort, like in an apartment where disorder is systematically organized, where bizarre cornices rest on the floor, where paintings seem distorted by an optic lens, where objects are deformed by being shoved together at odd angles, where furniture has its feet in the air, and where drawers push in instead of pulling out.”

But all of