Thursday’s print: In early 1800s France, Jean-Ignace-Isidore Gérard (who used the pseudonym Grandville) made fun of the bourgeoisie in a book collection of lithograph caricatures (Les metamorphoses du jour) portraying everyday scenes with anthropomorphized animals. I don’t have the detailed knowledge of the period nor enough French to understand many of the scenes, but they are beautifully done, and many are charming and funny even without fully understanding the context. These lithographs were printed in black and white, and then colored by hand afterwards. When the first edition sold out, the caricatures were copied into woodblocks for reprinting, and again hand-colored afterwards.
