Gustave Dore

Paul Gustave Doré (French pronunciation: /ɡystav dɔʁe/; Strasbourg, January 6, 1832-Paris, January 23, 1883) was a French artist, painter, sculptor and illustrator, the latter facet that gave him international fame. He is considered in his country the last of the great illustrators and internationally one of the most famous illustrators of the XIX century. Among his Notable works include the illustrations for The ingenious hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, the Bible (1865) and the Divine Comedy, which were the classic image that generations of readers, artists and theater and film directors had of them until the end of the XX century.

Biography

Born in Strasbourg, at the age of fifteen he obtained a contract with Charles Philipon for him to publish one lithograph per week. Then he was commissioned to work on François Rabelais, Honoré de Balzac and Dante Alighieri, making him, still very young, earn more than his contemporary Honoré Daumier.

In 1853 he illustrated some works by Lord Byron, which opened the doors for him to illustrate other English-speaking writers, among them The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.

In 1862 he traveled through Spain with Baron Davillier. As a result of that long trip, the following year a series of chronicles about Valencia, Galicia, Andalusia, Murcia would be published, with specific stays in Murcia, Granada, Madrid, and other Spanish capitals. The work was included in the Le Tour du Monde collection. In the same decade of 1860, Doré illustrated a French edition of The ingenious hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha , by Miguel de Cervantes, based on his vital experience in Spanish geography.

The success of a new version of the Bible, illustrated in 1865, served as a calling card for a major exhibition of his works in London, which would lead to the Doré Gallery on New Bond Street.

In 1869, Blanchard Jerrold suggested that they work together to produce a portrait of London. Jerrold came up with the idea of capturing The Microcosm of London (1808) by Rudolph Ackermann, William Pyne and Thomas Rowlandson.

Doré signed a five-year contract with the publisher Grant & Co. That meant she had to spend at least three months a year in London. She was paid the sum of £10,000 (approximately $160,000) per year. The book London: A Pilgrimage, with 180 engravings, was published in 1872. Although it was a commercial success, many of the critics did not like the publication, scandalized by the fact that Doré showed in his work the existing poverty in London. He was accused by the Art Journal of being a "fantasist rather than an illustrator", and denounced in other leading magazines, such as the Westminster Review. However, the success of London: A Pilgrimage prompted further commissions from English publishers: John Milton's Paradise Lost, The Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson, The Works by Thomas Hood, and The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. In parallel, his work appeared in the Illustrated London News.

His pictorial output is now much less well known than his illustrations, but it was equally commercially successful. He is characterized by a calculated naturalism, attentive to textures and inclined to gloom; he reveals influences of the Spanish baroque. Some 150 paintings by Doré are catalogued, of which not a few are large and committed; stands out for its size (6 x 9 meters) Jesus Christ Leaving Praetorium (Strasbourg, Musée d'Art moderne et contemporain). Other noteworthy works are Andromeda from the Chimei Museum in Tainan (Taiwan) and London Flower Sellers from the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. Doré's facet as a painter was not present in Spanish museums until the incorporation in the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, in 2020, of a large canvas on a Spanish theme, Los vagabundos [1].

He died after a brief illness on January 23, 1883 and was buried in the Père-Lachaise Cemetery in the French capital.

Illustrations

Due to the characteristics of his illustration work, Doré has been considered a visionary recreator of the medieval period. In his woodcuts, he shows an overwhelming and delirious Middle Ages, populated by dark forests, ruins, chaotic masses; visions of a late-romanticism to use in the field of illustration, but more pronounced in Doré than in other cartoonists. His vision of a Nature endowed with vast spaces, and reminiscent of John Martin, reveals an attraction for the sublime that is clearly related to Burkenian theories.

Endowed with an enormous capacity for work ("I will illustrate everything!", he stated on one occasion), he put into images the essential work of classics such as Dante, Cervantes, La Fontaine, Rabelais, Balzac, Edgar Allan Poe... In addition to his fantasy, he stands out for his side as a social chronicler, in his engravings for London or in the scenes of his travels. Thus, for example, in A Pilgrimage (1872), with a text by Blanchard Jerrold, Doré presents the suburbs of London in the industrial era through almost realistic images. One of these gloomy visions, Newgate Prison: the Exercise Yard, would fascinate Van Gogh years later, who painted it in 1890.

In 1885, the researcher Blanche Roosevelt undertook a detailed compilation and catalog of Doré's work, which could be schematically reflected in this elementary list:

• Illustrations for the Nouveau Paris1857;
• Histoire de ses 20 Arrondissementsa volume with 150 drawings, published by Barba;
• Illustrations for the Aline. Journal d'un Jeune Hommewritten by Valéry Vernier;
• 60 drawings for translation L'Habitation du DésertMayne Reid;

And the following list from 1860 to 1877:

Selection of works

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  Cover of the version illustrated by Doré del Quixote (1863).

• 

  Red Riding Hood (1883) one of the illustrations for the tales of Charles Perrault.

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  Fight between a bull and an elephantStop. L'Espagne (1862-3) Charles Davillier.

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  Illustration for the Canto XXXI of the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri (edit of 1867).

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  Jesus Christ coming out of Pretoria (Musée d'Art moderne et contemporain, Strasbourg).

• 

  Andromeda, picture of 1869; Chimei Museum (Tainan, Taiwan).

• 

  London Flower Sellers, Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool, UK).

• La Parque et l’Amour, terracotta, 1877, Brou's Fine Art Museum in Bourg-en-Bresse.
• L'Effroi, bronze, presented in the Hall of 1879.
• Monument to Alexander Dumas father1883, Place Malesherbes, Paris.
• À saute-moutonBronze.
• Acrobats, bronze, Ringling Museum, Sarasota, Florida.
• La Défense NationaleBronze, Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas.