Gustave Doré

Paul Gustave Louis Christophe Doré (/dɔːˈreɪ/; French: [ɡys.tav dɔ.ʁe]; 6 January 1832 – 23 January 1883[1]) was a French artist, printmaker, illustrator, comics artist, caricaturist, and sculptor who worked primarily with wood-engraving.

This article is about the French artist. For other uses, see Doré (disambiguation).

Paul Gustave Doré
Photograph by Nadar, 1867
Born	(1832-01-06)6 January 1832 Strasbourg, France
Died	23 January 1883(1883-01-23) (aged 51) Paris, France
Nationality	French
Known for	Painting, etching, illustrations

Biography

Doré by Carolus-Duran (1877)

Doré was born in Strasbourg on 6 January 1832. By age 5 he was a prodigy artist, creating drawings that were mature beyond his years. Seven years later, he began carving in stone. At the age of 15, Doré began his career working as a caricaturist for the French paper Le journal pour rire.[2] Wood-engraving was his primary method at this time.[3] In the late 1840s and early 1850s, he made several text comics, like Les Travaux d'Hercule (1847), Trois artistes incompris et mécontents (1851), Les Dés-agréments d'un voyage d'agrément (1851) and L'Histoire de la Sainte Russie (1854). Doré subsequently went on to win commissions to depict scenes from books by Cervantes, Rabelais, Balzac, Milton, and Dante. He also illustrated "Gargantua et Pantagruel" in 1854.

In 1853 Doré was asked to illustrate the works of Lord Byron.[4] This commission was followed by additional work for British publishers, including a new illustrated Bible. In 1856 he produced 12 folio-size illustrations of The Legend of The Wandering Jew, which propagated longstanding antisemitic views of the time,[5] for a short poem which Pierre-Jean de Béranger had derived from a novel of Eugène Sue of 1845.[6][7][8]

In the 1860s he illustrated a French edition of Cervantes's Don Quixote, and his depictions of the knight and his squire, Sancho Panza, have become so famous that they have influenced subsequent readers, artists, and stage and film directors' ideas of the physical "look" of the two characters.[9] Doré also illustrated an oversized edition of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven", an endeavor that earned him 30,000 francs from publisher Harper & Brothers in 1883.[10]

Doré's illustrations for the Bible (1866) were a great success, and in 1867 Doré had a major exhibition of his work in London. This exhibition led to the foundation of the Doré Gallery in Bond Street, London.[11] In 1869, Blanchard Jerrold, the son of Douglas William Jerrold, suggested that they work together to produce a comprehensive portrait of London. Jerrold had obtained the idea from The Microcosm of London produced by Rudolph Ackermann, William Pyne, and Thomas Rowlandson (published in three volumes from 1808 to 1810).[12] Doré signed a five-year contract with the publishers Grant & Co that involved his staying in London for three months a year, and he received the vast sum of £10,000 a year for the project. Doré was mainly celebrated for his paintings in his day. His paintings remain world-renowned, but his woodcuts and engravings, like those he did for Jerrold, are where he excelled as an artist with an individual vision.

The completed book London: A Pilgrimage, with 180 wood-engravings, was published in 1872. It enjoyed commercial and popular success, but the work was disliked by many contemporary critics. Some of these critics were concerned by the fact that Doré appeared to focus on the poverty that existed in parts of London. Doré was accused by The Art Journal of "inventing rather than copying".[13] The Westminster Review claimed that "Doré gives us sketches in which the commonest, the vulgarest external features are set down".[14] The book was a financial success, however, and Doré received commissions from other British publishers.

Doré's later work included illustrations for new editions of Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Milton's Paradise Lost, Tennyson's Idylls of the King, The Works of Thomas Hood, and The Divine Comedy. Doré's work also appeared in the weekly newspaper The Illustrated London News.

Doré never married and, following the death of his father in 1849, he continued to live with his mother, illustrating books until his death in Paris following a short illness. The city's Père Lachaise Cemetery contains his grave.[15] At the time of his death in 1883, he was working on illustrations for an edition of Shakespeare's plays.[16] The government of France made him a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 1861.[17]

Works

Doré was a prolific artist; thus the following list of works is not complete and it does not include his paintings, sculptures, and many of his journal illustrations:

Date	Author	Work	Volumes / Format	Illustrations	Publisher	Ref
1854	Gustave Doré	Histoire pittoresque dramatique et caricaturale de la Sainte Russie, d'après les chroniqueurs et historiens Nestor Nikan Sylvestre Karamsin Ségur etc.	1 vol.	500	Paris: de Bry	[18][19]
1854	Rabelais	Oeuvres contenant la vie de Gargantua et celle de Pantagruel ...	1 vol. 4to.	Frontis. & 15	J.Bry Ainé, Paris	[20]
1855	Honoré de Balzac	Les Contes Drôlatiques		425	Société Générale de la Libraire, and in Le Journal pour Tous	[21]
1855	Jules Gérard	La Chasse au Lion	1 vol. 12mo.	11	Librairie Nouvelle	[22]
1856		Fierabras d'Alexandrie, Légende Nationale traduite par Mary Lafon	1 vol in 8vo	123	Librairie Nouvelle	[23]
1856		Mémoires d'un Jeune Cadet, par Victor Percival		48		[23]
1856		La Légende du Juif Errant	1 vol. grand in folio	12 Image:Wandering jew title page.jpg	Michel Lévy	[23]
1857[24]	Dante Alighieri	L'Enfer		70		[25]
1857 autumn	Ed. de La Bédollière	Nouveau Paris, Histoire de ses 20 Arrondissements	1 vol in 4to	150	Barba	[26]
1857 autumn	Valéry Vernier	Aline, Journal d'un Jeune Homme		one large page	Dentu	[26]
1860–1862	Thomas Mayne Reid	L'Habitation du Désert	1 vol. in 16mo	60	Hachette	[26]
1860–1862	Ann S. Stevens	La Fille du Grand Chieftain	1 vol.	15		[26]
1860–1862	M. V. Victor	Flêche d'Or	1 vol.	13		[26]
1860–1862	E. S. Ellis	L'Ange des Frontières	1 vol.	10		[26]
1860–1862	N. W. Buxted	Les Vierges de la Forêt	1 vol.	10		[26]
1860	William Shakespeare	The Tempest	1 vol. in 4to		(London)	[26]
1861		Les Figures du Temps	1 vol. in 12mo		(Paris)	[26]
1861	Plouvier and Vincent	Les Chansons d'Autrefois	in 12mo		Coulon and Pineau, Paris	[26]
1861	Edmond About[27]	Le Roi des Montagnes	1 vol. in 8vo	157	Hachette and Co., Paris	[26]
1862	Saintine	Les Mythologies du Rhin	1 vol. in 8vo	165	Hachette and Co., Paris	[26]
1862	L'Abbé Léon Godard	L'Espagne, Mœurs et Paysages	2 vols in 8vo	4 Image:Moeurs et paysages title page.jpg	Alfred Mame et Fils, Tours Image:Moeurs et paysages title page.jpg or Paris[26]	[26]
1862	Malte-Brun[28]	Les États Unis et le Mexique	1 vol. in 4to		Brun, Paris	[26]
1862		Histoire aussi intéressante qu'invraisemblable de l'intrépide Capitaine Castagnette, neveu de l'Homme à la Tête de Bois	1 vol. in 4to	43	Hachette	[26]
1862	Charles Perrault	Les Contes de Perrault		11		[29]
1862		Aventures du Baron de Münchausen, traduction nouvelle par Théophile Gautier fils	1 vol.		(Paris, Charles Furne)	[26]
1863	M. Épiné	Légende de Croquemitaine	1 vol. in 4to	177	Hachette	[26]
1863	Gastineau	La Chasse au Lion et à la Panthère	1 vol. in 8vo		Hachette and Co.	[26]
1863	Miguel de Cervantes	Don Quixote de la Mancha translation by Louis Viardot	2 vols. folio	370	Hachette and Co., Paris, and Cassell and Co., London	[26]
1863		Les Contes de Perrault or in Spanish Los Cuentos de Perrault		100+	Hetzels. in Spanish by Ledouse	[26]
1865	Gastineau	De Paris en Afrique	1 vol. in 12mo		(Paris)	[26]
1865	A. Masse	L'Histoire d'un Minute	1 vol., 12mo		(Paris)	[26]
1866	Victor Hugo	Travailleurs de la Mer			Sampson Low and Co., London	[26][30]
1865	E. Edgar	Cressy and Poictiers	1 vol. in 8vo	50+	(London)	[26]
1865	Thomas Moore	L'Épicurien (French translation)	in 8vo		(Paris)	[26]
1865	Tom Hood	Fairy Realm	in folio		(London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler)	[26]
1865	Quatrelles	Le Chevalier Beautemps	grand in 8vo		(Paris)	[31]
1865	Chateaubriand	Atala	2 vols, grand folio	80	Hachette Edition	[26]
1866	Théophile Gautier	Le Capitaine Fracasse	1 vol. grand in 8vo	60	Charpentier	[26]
1866	G. La Bédollière	Histoire de la Guerre en Mexique	in 4to		(Paris)	[26]
1866	Dante Alighieri	The Vision of Hell			London, Cassell, Petter, and Galpin	[26]
1867	Dante Alighieri	Il Purgatorio ed il Paradiso			Hachette and Co.	[26]
1866[32]	X. B. Saintine	Le Chemin des Écoliers	1 vol. in 8vo	450 Image:Le chemin des ecoliers title page.jpg (not all by Doré)	Hachette and Co.	[26]
1866		La Sainte Bible, according to the Vulgate, new translation	2 vols. grand in folio	241	Mame, Tours; Cassell and Co., England	[26]
1866	John Milton	Paradise Lost		50 Plates	Cassell and Co.	[26]
1867	La Bédollière	La France et la Russie			(Paris)	[26]
1867		Les Fables de Lafontaine	2 vols. in folio	8 large and 250 small plates	Hachette and Co.	[26]
1867		Les Pays-bas et la Belgique	in 8vo		(Paris)	[26]
1870	Thomas Hood	(Poems)	2 vols. in folio	9 Plates	Ward and Lock, London	[26]
1873		New edition of Rabelais	2 vols. in folio		Paris : Garnier; London: Chatto and Windus	[26]
1876	Louis Énault	London	1 vol. in 4to	174 wood-engravings	Hachette and Co.	[26]
1874	Baron Ch. Davilliers	L'Espagne	in 4to	309 wood-engravings	Hachette and Co.; London: Sampson Low and Co.	[26]
1875	Samuel Taylor Coleridge	The Rime of the Ancient Mariner	in folio	39 engraved plates and 3 vignettes	London: Doré Gallery	[33]
1875	Michaud	Histoire des Croisades	2 vol. medium folio	100 grand compositions	Paris: Hachette and Co.	[26]
	Alfred Tennyson	Idylls of the King				[26]
1877	Ariosto	Orlando Furioso		36 drawings	Hachette and Co. (London: Ward and Lock)	[26]
1884	Edgar Allan Poe	The Raven		26 steel engravings	London: Sampson Low and Co., New York: Harper and Co.	[34]

Gallery

• Gustave Doré
• 
  Roland à Roncevaux, private collection, Paris
• 
  La Sainte Trinité, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery
• 
  Ecce Homo, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery
• 
  La folie, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery
• 
  Les Oceanides Les Naiades de la mer, 1860s
• 
  Landscape in Scotland, ca. 1875, Toledo Museum of Art
• 
  Le Christ quittant le prétoire 1867–1872, Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art
• 
  Le Christ quittant le prétoire
• 
  Soir en Alsace
• 
  La Siesta, Memory of Spain
• 
  Mont Sainte-Odile avec mur païen
• 
  Andromeda, 1869, Chimei Museum, Tainan, Taiwan
• 
  Flower Sellers of London
• 
  Jacob wrestling with the angel, 1855
• 
  Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• 
  Little Red Riding Hood
• 
  Dante's The Divine Comedy
• 
  Loch Lomond
• 
  Paolo and Francesca da Rimini
• 
  Landscape in Scotland, ca. 1878, Walters Art Museum
• 
  Doré illustrated several fairy tales: Cendrillon (or Cinderella).
• 
  A Doré wood engraving illustration from The Divine Comedy
• 
  Over London by Rail Gustave Doré c 1870. From London: A Pilgrimage
• 
  Crusades troubadours singing the glories of the crusades
• 
  Don Quixote illustrated by Gustave Doré.
• 
  Don Quixote illustrated by Gustave Doré, another one of the 500 pieces Doré created for the work.
• 
  Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote illustrated by Gustave Doré
• 
  Another example of Don Quixote (Don Quijote in Spanish) illustrated by Gustave Doré
• 
  Rabelais's Gargantua (English translation)
• 
  Engraving The Confusion of Tongues, 1865
• 
  A Backstreet in London, 1868, National Gallery of Art
• 
  Edyrn with His Lady and Dwarf Journey to Arthur's Court, in Idylls of the King by Lord Alfred Tennyson, illustrated by Gustave Doré
• 
  La Belle au Bois Dormant - third of six engravings by Gustave Doré

References

1. Gustave Doré at the Encyclopædia Britannica
2. Lyons, Martin (2011). Books: A Living History. Los Angeles: Getty Publications. p. 135. ISBN 978-1-60606-083-4.
3. "Books: A Living History" by Martin Lyons
4. Complete Works of Lord Byron illustrated by Ch. Mettais, Bocourt, G. Doré. Published by J. Bry, Paris, 1853. The version at archive.org is in French. The illustrations are not attributed to any one of the three named on the title-page. A handwritten note at page 5 remarks that another edition of 1856 made no mention of Doré among the illustrators, but his designs still appeared in the book.
5. Richard S. Levy, Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, Volume 1, Oxford 2005, p 186
6. Zafran, with Robert Rosenblum and Lisa Small, editors, Eric (2007). "Fantasy and Faith: The Art of Gustave Dore". Yale University Press.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
7. "eBay". 22 January 2013. Archived from the original on 22 January 2013.
8. "Willis's Price Current: A Catalogue of Superior Second Hand Books Ancient and Modern ... to which are Added a List of New Publications and Current Notes for the Month". Willis and Sotheran. 21 January 2018 – via Google Books.
9. "Gustave Doré". lambiek.net.
10. Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. p. 252. ISBN 0-8018-5730-9
11. McQueen, A. "Gustave Doré," in Nineteenth-Century Art, Highlights from the Tanenbaum Collection, London: 2015, p. 54.
12. "Introduction to The Microcosm of London (1808-10) – Romantic London". www.romanticlondon.org.
13. Ackyroyd, Peter (2005). London: A Pilgrimage (introduction). Anthem Press. pp. xix.
14. Chapman, J (1873). The Westminster Review, Vol 99. p. 341.
15. Stuthehistoryguy. "Gustave Doré". Findagrave. Retrieved 12 November 2016.
16. Lyons, Martin (2011). Books: A Living History. J. Paul Getty Museum. p. 135.
17. "Doré, (Louis Auguste) Gustave (1832–1883), illustrator | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". www.oxforddnb.com. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-67162. Retrieved 2020-01-29.
18. indyworld.com Archived 2013-11-26 at the Wayback Machine Gustave Doré's «Holy Russia» by Bill Kartalopoulos. INDY Magazine, Summer 2004
19. David Kunzle (1983). "Gustave Dore's History of Holy Russia: Anti-Russian Propaganda from the Crimean War to the Cold War". The Russian Review. Russian Review, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Jul., 1983), pp. 271-299. 42 (3): 271–299. doi:10.2307/129823. JSTOR 129823.
20. Eleanor Garvey, A Catalogue of an Exhibition of the Philip Hofer Bequest, 1988.
21. Roosevelt, Blanche: "Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré.", page 183. Cassell & Company, Limited, New York, 1885.
22. Roosevelt, Blanche: "Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré.", page 179. Cassell & Company, Limited, New York, 1885.
23. Roosevelt, Blanche: "Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré.", page 207. Cassell & Company, Limited, New York, 1885.
24. Roosevelt, Blanche: "Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré", pages 215. Cassell & Company, Limited, New York, 1885. Roosevelt states that "In Doré's catalogue 'L'Inferno' figures amongst the works of 1857, and I shall therefore speak of it as belonging to that year's collection, although it was not brought out until 1860."
25. Roosevelt, Blanche: "Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré", pages 212-227. Cassell & Company, Limited, New York, 1885.
26. Roosevelt, Blanche: "Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré", pages 241-243. Cassell & Company, Limited, New York, 1885.
27. Roosevelt, Blanche: "Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré", pages 63. Cassell & Company, Limited, New York, 1885. Gustave Doré, Edmond About, and H. Taine were more than contemporaries: they knew each other from college. Roosevelt quotes Doré, "...from that date [1847] until 1850, I occupied myself—sometimes well and sometimes badly—in finishing my studies at the Lycée Charlemagne. It was there that I was so fortunate as to have Edmond About and H. Taine for fellow-collegians."
28. Roosevelt, Blanche: "Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré", pages 241. Cassell & Company, Limited, New York, 1885. Roosevelt attributes authorship to "Malted": "'Les États Unis et la Mexique,' by Malted (sic) (Brun, Paris, 1862), 1 vol. in 4to." She is most likely referring to either Conrad Malte-Brun or his son, Victor Adolphe Malte-Brun, both noted French Geographers.
29. Opie, Iona and Peter. The Classic Fairy Tales. 1974. Oxford University Press. p. 134.
30. Roosevelt, Blanche: "Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré", page 242. Cassell & Company, Limited, New York, 1885. Roosevelt implies, though does not specifically state, that a French publisher published this volume in 1865. For one, she places this reference with the other books published in 1865, for another, she uses the word also when mentioning that Sampson Low brought out a copy in London in 1866. Additionally, an English publication would most likely be translated and have a title of Toilers of the Sea. Roosevelt's line reads thus: "Victor Hugo's 'Travailleurs de la Mer', also in 1866, brought out by Sampson Low and Co., in London."
31. Roosevelt, Blanche: "Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré.", page 242. Cassell & Company, Limited, New York, 1885. Roosevelt states that the preface was written by Alex. Dumas fils
32. Although Blanche Roosevelt lists this book as being published in 1866, here Image:Le chemin des ecoliers title page.jpg is the title-page of an edition published five years earlier, with Gustave Doré drawings. Roosevelt is most likely mistaken.
33. Leblanc, Henri (1931). Catalogue de l'oeuvre complet de Gustave Doré, Paris: Ch. Bosse, p. 74.
34. Roosevelt, Blanche: "Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré.", page 488. Cassell & Company, Limited, New York, 1885.

Further reading

• Delorme, Rene (1879). Gustave Doré. Paris: Librairie d'Art.(80 illustrations, earliest photogravures of Dore paintings)
• Roosevelt, Blanche (1885). Life and Reminiscence of Gustave Doré. New York: Cassell & Co., Ltd.(141 illustrations)
• Jerrold, Blanchard (1891). The Life of Gustave Doré. London: W. H. Allen & Co., Ltd.(138 illustrations)
• Valmy-Baysse, J. (1930). Gustave Doré – L'Art et la Vie. Paris: Editions Marcel Seheur.(314 illustrations)
• Deze, Louis (1930). Gustave Doré – Bibliographie et catalogue complet de l'oeuvre. Paris: Editions Marcel Seheur.(103 illustrations)
• LeBlanc, Henri (1931). Catalogue de l'oeuvre complet de Gustave Doré. Paris: Ch. Bosse.(30 illustrations)
• Farner, Konrad (1963). Gustave Doré der Industrialisierte Romantiker ((2V) ed.). Dresden: Verlag der Kunst.(521 illustrations, reprinting most of the Delorme photogravures)
• Gustave Doré 1832–1883. Strasbourg: Musée d'Art Moderne. 1983.(exhibition book: 591 illustrations)
• Renonciat, Annie (1983). La vie et l'oeuvre de Gustave Doré. Paris: ACR Edition.(343 illustrations)
• Malan, Dan (1995). Gustave Doré, Adrift on Dreams of Splendor. St. Louis: MCE Publishing Co.(500 illustrations)
• Fantasy & Faith: the Art of Gustave Doré. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2007. (exhibition book: 250 illustrations, 40 in full-color, sometimes incorrectly listed as, "40 b/w, 120 color illustrations")
• Kaenel, Philippe (2014). Doré: Master of Imagination. Paris: Flammarion. ISBN 978-2-08-131643-0. (catalog of the exhibition held at Musée d'Orsay and National Gallery of Canada, 335 pages)
• Bibliographie de la France (Journal General de l'Imprimerie et de la Librairie) (annual listing of the books published in France)

External links

• Works by Gustave Doré at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Gustave Doré at Internet Archive
• Gustave Doré Digital Collection of Illustrations from the University at Buffalo Libraries
• Gustave Doré in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website
• Gustave Doré at Library of Congress Authorities, with 305 catalogue records