Ferdinand-Sigismond Bach, known as Ferdinand Bac, (15 August 1859, Stuttgart, Germany - 18 November 1952, Compiegne, France) was a German-French cartoonist, artist and writer, son of an illegitimate nephew of the Emperor Napoleon.

As a young man, he mixed in the fashionable world of Paris of the Belle Époque, and was known for his caricatures, which appeared in popular journals.

His father, Karl Philipp Heinrich Bach (1811-1870), was a geologist, cartographer and landscape architect, the illegitimate son of Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia.

A few years after the collapse of the regime, he chose to leave Germany and his mother to live a quiet but bohemian life in Paris.

He was introduced to the Parisian salon society by his godfather Arsène Houssaye and Prince Napoleon, and became a fashionable artist.

[2] Ferdinand Bac's early drawings were published in the satirical weekly La Caricature, edited between 1880 and 1890 by Albert Robida, himself a cartoonist.

[4] Bac became one of the leading designers and cartoonists of his time, with a reputation equal to contemporaries such as Robida, Job, Sem, Jean-Louis Forain and Caran d'Ache.

His 1892 drawing Femmes Automatiques for La Vie Parisienne depicted a collection of women in different roles who could be animated by inserting a coin.

It implies that in addition to their legitimate roles as dancer, chambermaid, actress and so on, the women would provide sexual services at varying prices.

[2] In 1880 he was in Morocco with the artists John Singer Sargent and Charles Daux, where the three men rented a small house in Tangier.

Colours were warm, including ochres, pinks and saffrons, offset by dark greens and Venetian red.

Until the end of his life, Ferdinand Bac continued to travel, write and draw, reflecting on the political and historical development of the world.

Ferdinand Bac died in Compiègne on 18 November 1952, aged 93, surviving his friend Émile Ladan-Bockairy by three days.