*Monsieur Vautour* (Mister Vulture)

In a small circular drawing, a landlord stands sheathed in a frock coat and a stovepipe hat, one hand on a cane, a rolled lease under his arm, a strongbox waiting at his heel. From the collar up he is a vulture, hooked beak and hooded eye, feathers where the whiskers should be. The handwritten caption names him Monsieur Vautour, a very hard man, vautour being French both for the bird and for a grasping proprietor. Grandville makes the metaphor literal, grafting the creature onto the bourgeois until character and animal are one. This is the trick at the heart of political cartooning, the moral read straight off the face. Done in fine pen line rather than for print, it shows the artist working out the join between man and beast by hand.