Remembering Doré

Tucked away in the National Gallery of Victoria’s ‘works on paper’ collection is a copy of Gustave Doré’s ‘Two Hundred Sketches – Humorous and Grotesque’ from 1867. While Paul Gustave Louis Chrisophe Doré  (1832–1883) is not commonly thought of when the names of important 19^th century artists come to mind, his creative initiatives continue to influence art in the 21^st century.

If you like comic strips, or your childhood images of fairy tales were fashioned by Mother Goose stories or Disney cartoons – then you are indebted to Doré. If you are more ‘literary’ and you have a clear vision of Don Quixote or Baron Munchhausen, it is due to Doré. If you enjoy films about the Bible or the characters in ‘Star Wars’ or the visuals in the ‘Lord of the Rings’ or ‘Harry Potter’ series, then Doré was responsible. And, if you are impressed with extraordinary and diverse artistic talent ranging from drawing to painting to sculpture – with an output of around 50,000 works – then you need to acquaint yourself better with this extraordinary artist.

Born in Strasbourg in 1832 to an engineer father, Doré’s prodigious creative abilities were recognised by the time he was five years of age. Coming from an affluent and musically talented family, Doré’s drawing was encouraged, and he created caricature sketches when very young. At age eight, he drew an illustrated story of 28 pages in length inspired by Grandville’s Scènes de la Vie Privée et Publique des Animaux. And the following year, made his first attempt to illustrate Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’.

During a trip to Paris with his parents at age fifteen, Doré showed his drawings to Auber and Philipon, publishers of comic images, and was immediately given a three year contract to work in Paris. Primarily using wood-engraving, his caricatures were featured weekly in the satirical paper Le journal pour rire. Two years later, and after the death of his father, Doré’s commercial success as an artist allowed him to support his family.

As well as creating several early comic texts (and being recognised as the progenitor of the comic), Doré also received commissions to illustrate the works of Rabelais, Balzac, Cervantes, Dante, Perrault and Byron. In 1866 Doré’s images for the Bible led to a retrospective exhibition in London and subsequently a permanent gallery in Bond Street (for 25 years) dedicated to showing his art. During the late 1860s and 1870s, Doré’s London connections resulted in a social document of the city – ‘London: A Pilgrimage’ – and illustrations for Tennyson, Milton, Coleridge and Shakespeare. The Shakespearean project, which aimed to produce 1,000 pictures, was sadly not completed due to the artist’s early death aged 51 years. One of his last works was the production of 26 steel engravings for Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, The Raven, in 1883.

In illustrating these works, Doré’s art plunges us into a world of fantastic imagery. As Robert Rosenblum (Professor of Modern European Art at New York University) wrote in ‘Resurrecting Gustave Doré’ (2007): “[Doré’] embraced invisible worlds … [where] apparitions are depicted with a perpetuum mobile of volcanic turbulence, in which figures and settings, and light and darkness, are adrift in an ocean of shattered chiaroscuro. Whether illustrating the Bible or Byron, Doré conceived his narratives as cosmic events taking place in a world far beyond the space-time coordinates of 19^th century life and even further beyond the reach of terrestrial human scale”.

Although primarily remembered as the most renowned of illustrators, with his work disseminated to an unprecedented degree around the world, Doré was also an etcher, watercolourist, oil painter, sculptor and draughtsman, with a creative output ranging from satire to religion, and from sketches to monumental canvases. However, it was largely his illustrations which were valued during his lifetime with his other artistic output only now receiving thoughtful attention and recognition.

Doré’s extraordinary work ethic, his charm and self-confidence, his good looks and remarkable talent connected him with Parisian high society and the world of notable artists, writers and musicians. His friends included: Daumier, Dumas, Rossini, Sarah Bernhardt (with whom he had an affair) and the Empress Eugenie. In 1854 he was honoured as a Chevalier, and in 1879 awarded the Légion d’Honneur. He was given audiences with both the French emperor, Napoléon III, and Queen Victoria.

The National Gallery of Victoria has seventeen works by Doré and four works ‘after Doré’ in the collection. These include historical, satirical, religious and genre scenes.

His book ‘Two Hundred Sketches’ provides comical glimpses of life in England and France in the second half of the 19^th century. Reflecting on Barrie Sheppard’s recent posts on the Royal Academy art shows, I was particularly struck by his drawings entitled ‘At the Exhibition of Paintings’.

More information on the prodigious output of this artist can be found on the Musée d’Orsay website. This museum staged a retrospective exhibiton of Doré’s art in 2014: https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/events/exhibitions/in-the-museums/exhibitions-in-the-musee-dorsay/article/gustave-dore-37172.html?cHash=1f651887fc

This entry marks the 200^th blogpost on ‘Guided By Art’. Thank you to my contributors and readers for their comments, encouragement and support. As one reader noted: ‘it is turning into an Arabian Nights anthology’. Only 801 more entries to go …