Grandville, the pseudonym of French caricaturist Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard, had at the age of twenty-one come to Paris, where he soon afterwards published a collection of lithographs entitled Les Tribulations de la petite proprieté.

He followed this by Les Plaisirs de toutdge and La Sibylle des salons.

In 1828-29, he publishes a satirical work entitled “Metamorphoses du jour” (“Present-day Metamorphoses”), a series of seventy scenes in which individuals with the bodies of men and faces of animals are made to play a human comedy.

These drawings are remarkable for the extraordinary skill with which human characteristics are represented in animal facial features.

The success of this work leads to his being engaged as artistic contributor to various Parisian periodicals, such as Le Silhouette, L'Artiste, La Caricature, and Le Charivari.