Summary

Gustave Doré, born on January 6, 1832 in Strasbourg and died on January 23, 1883 in Paris, in his hotel on the rue Saint-Dominique, was a French illustrator, caricaturist, painter, lithographer and sculptor.

Family

Gustave Doré was born on January 6, 1832 at 5 (now 16) rue de la Nuée-Bleue in Strasbourg.

He was the son of Pierre Louis Christophe Doré, an engineer of the Ponts et Chaussées, born in Coblence on 23 thermidor of the year X of the Republic, and of Alexandrine Marie Anne Pluchart, born in Paris on 20 June 1806. They had two other sons, Ernest, born in Épinal on June 1, 1830, who became a composer and bank employee, and Émile Paul, born two years after Gustave, a future general. The Doré family lived on a good income, which allowed Gustave to devote himself fully to his art. Gustave Doré developed a strong bond with his mother throughout his life, who was filled with pride at the talent of her son, whom she often described as a genius. This support was less shared by his father who intended him for a less precarious career and wished to enroll him in the École Polytechnique. In 1834, the Doré family moved to 6 rue des Écrivains, near the Gothic cathedral.

Youth (1832-1847)

From the age of five, Gustave Doré, with his keen sense of observation, showed a singular talent for drawing. As soon as he got his first palette, he painted a hen in green that terrified the whole town. His great curiosity allowed him to multiply eclectic sketches (intimate or urban scenes, mythological or ancient). Gustave enters the class of the Vergnette boarding school, place de la Cathédrale, as an intern where he begins to illustrate his school notebooks and letters he writes to his parents and friends. He made his first caricatures, taking his entourage as the subject. His fertile imagination was nourished by early readings and inspirations that were exceptional for his age. Doré draws Mr. Fox, a series of six graphite drawings inspired by the work of Grandville.

With a humorous and lively tone, he drew independent scenes using anthropomorphism, inspired in particular by Cham and Rodolphe Töpffer, especially his "stories in prints". Doré also learned to play the violin, which he mastered very quickly and which he played all his life. In 1840, on the occasion of the quadri-centenary of the invention of printing and the inauguration of a statue of Gutenberg in Strasbourg, he proposed to his schoolmates to reproduce the historical procession. He organized the whole thing, decorated the floats and drove the float of the guild of glass painters. This inaugural episode has left its mark on the artist and his biographers.

In 1841, Gustave Doré's father, Jean-Philippe Doré, a polytechnician, was appointed chief engineer of the Ponts et Chaussées de l'Ain and the Doré family settled in Bourg-en-Bresse. The child with precocious gifts was a very good student at school but he was even more noticed for his caricatures and drawings inspired by the Bresse world around him. He found inspiration in the gothic decorations and medieval houses of Bourg.

At the age of 13, in 1845, his first works to be published were three lithographed pen-and-ink drawings by the Ceyzeriat printing house in Bourg, including La Vogue de Brou. The same year he realized Les Aventures de Mistenflûte et de Mirliflor, an album of 16 pages.

The professional beginnings (1847-1850)

Gustave Doré's family stayed at the Hotel Louvois, rue de Richelieu in Paris, in September 1847 for what was to be a short stay. While his father was away, Doré went to meet Charles Philipon, director of the publishing house Aubert&Cie and founder of the satirical newspapers La Caricature (banned by the press laws of 1835) and Le Charivari, to show him his many works. These newspapers revealed many illustrators, including Paul Gavarni and Honoré Daumier.

Charles Philipon then offered a three-year contract to Gustave Doré, aged 15, allowing him to draw a weekly page in the new weekly Le Journal pour rire. This agreement came about only after six months of deliberations with Gustave's father, who was still strongly opposed to his son becoming an artist. He finally gave his approval, in particular thanks to the support of Mrs. Doré in favor of her son. The signature of the contract is conditional on the continuation of his studies and a fair remuneration. As soon as the contract was signed, Philipon published Les Travaux d'Hercule, the first official lithographed work of the artist, in the collection of "Jabot" at the publisher Aubert. As Thierry Groensteen points out, Les Travaux d'Hercule is part of "the first collection of comics in the history of French publishing. This album shows a flexible line, with pen and lithographic ink on stone, with a maximum of three boxes per page and brief captions that allude to the comic parody of drawings. From this sequence of squares emerge movement, duration and dynamism.

The Parisian publisher asked Gustave Doré to come and live in Paris where, from 1847, he attended the Lycée Charlemagne. He stayed with Madame Hérouville, a friend of his mother's, on rue Saint-Paul. He divided his time between classes and caricatures for the Journal pour rire from 1848. Gustave Doré arrived at the height of the press boom (thanks to mechanization), caricatures and serial novels. The month of February 1848 marks his first publication in the newspaper with the printing of the Beau jour des Étrennes. To compose his caricatures, he draws on his daily life at school and on the current events of the time.

Despite his young age, Gustave Doré showed an independent character and forged an important network in the circles he frequented. On May 4, 1849, his father died of a devastating illness. He had not seen his father since he had given his consent to work with Philipon. The widow Doré and her three sons settled in Paris in the private mansion at 73 rue Saint-Dominique (today number 7) that Alexandrine Doré had just inherited. He took advantage of the Salon Libre to exhibit two of his pen-and-ink drawings: Le Nouveau Bélisaire et une scène d'ivrognes (The New Belisarius and a Scene of Drunkards) and L'union fait la force (Union is Strength). He also painted his first canvas, Fisherman mooring a boat during a storm.

Travels, first attempts at painting, large graphic works (1850-1860)

His second album, Trois artistes incompris et mécontents (Three misunderstood and discontented artists), came off the press around 1851, followed by Des-agréments d'un voyage d'agrément (The inconveniences of a pleasure trip), and throughout the decade he lithographed comic sequels (Ces Chinois de Parisiens (The Chinese of Paris), Les Folies gauloises (The Gallic Follies) from the time of the Romans to the present day), as well as collaborating with the newspaper L'Illustration.

The two albums Trois artistes incompris et mécontents and Des-agréments d'un voyage d'agrément are published by Aubert. Freed from the inspiration of Rodolphe Töppfer and the respect of the frames, Gustave Doré creates freely arranged vignettes with several dimensions. The plurality of the composition of the pages, its innovations and its graphic variants are deployed especially in Des-agréments d'un voyage d'agrément. His technique uses direct drawing on stone with a lithographic pencil.

From 1851 onwards, while exhibiting his paintings, he produced a few sculptures on religious subjects and contributed to various magazines including the Journal pour tous. In 1851, he exhibited his first painting, Pins sauvages, at the Salon.

He was invited to the court by Napoleon III in 1854, he then took advantage of the Parisian social life that he loved. At the Salon, his first religious work, L'Ange de Tobie, was acquired by the State for the sum of 2,000 francs. With his graphic experience behind him, Doré began to paint history with The Battle of the Alma, presented at the 1855 Salon along with two landscapes. His painting Le Meurtre de Riccio was refused by the jury.

Between 1852 and 1883, Gustave Doré became increasingly recognized and illustrated more than one hundred and twenty volumes that were published in France, but also in Germany, England and Russia. He completed several lithographic albums (La Ménagerie parisienne, Les Différents Publics de Paris).

In 1852, he illustrated with a painter's hand, The Wandering Jew, a poem set to music by Pierre Dupont, a breakthrough work in his artistic career and in the history of wood engraving. Abandoning the copperplate engraving usually favored, Gustave Doré chose the technique of wood tinting (interpretation engraving). This technique allows an infinite palette of tones, very close to pictorial effects. Bois de teinte allows for direct drawing with wash and gouache on blocks of end wood (cut in slices perpendicular to the trunk) whose hard surface is worked with a chisel. Doré formed his own school of engravers. Each plate in the work, with a short caption from the poem, is a work of painting. The large format of the work allows the transition to folio films. The image is independent of the text. This work knows a great public success.

The Crimean War inspired him to write his fourth graphic story, L'Histoire pittoresque, dramatique et caricaturale de la sainte Russie. During the Crimean campaign, he produced, in 1854, both as author and illustrator, Histoire pittoresque, dramatique et caricaturale de la sainte Russie (Picturesque, dramatic and caricatured history of holy Russia), a charge against this country with which France and England had gone to war. Considered the last of Gustave Doré's "comic strip" albums, the only one openly political, it was produced in the context of a broad nationalist movement with the beginning of the Crimean War and revived the Western cliché of Russian barbarism.

Consisting of more than 500 vignettes, challenging the codes of layout and drawing, this violent political pamphlet summarizes the bloody history of Russia from its origins to the contemporary era of Gustave Doré. The disproportionate nature of the scenes of war, massacres, assassinations and torture provokes smiles rather than grimaces of fear. Jubilation is in the spotlight both verbally and graphically. As David Kunzle points out, "Doré puts his graphic fantasies in tune with his verbal extravagances, indulging in the joys of puns to such an extent that it is often the prospect of a pun that justifies the choice of an episode."

It is an album that prefigures the comic strip, where he plays on the gap between the text and the illustration, and where he uses astonishing graphic tricks.

Paul Lafon, writer and editor, whom he had met at Philipon's, agreed to illustrate Rabelais' works at his request. In 1854, the work was published by Joseph Bry with 99 vignettes and 14 woodcut plates. This affordable edition, with a low quality of printing and a modest format (a large octavo) does not live up to the strong ambitions of Gustave Doré. In 1873 he illustrated another version of the Works of Rabelais.

Just back from a family vacation in Switzerland, Doré set out for Biarritz in the company of Paul Dalloz and Théophile Gautier who strongly supported him in his art criticism. He made a foray into Spain to illustrate the Voyage aux eaux des Pyrénées (1855) by his friend Hippolyte Taine. The illustration, in 1855 of Les Cent Contes drolatiques d'Honoré de Balzac (nearly 600 drawings) confirmed his reputation as an illustrator.

In 1859, he collaborated on the decoration of the staff room of the Hospital de la Charité in Paris, partially reconstructed in the museum of the Assistance publique - Hôpitaux de Paris.

The golden age of the illustrator (1861-1866)

Gustave Doré wished to deploy his talent in the illustration of the great works of literature, suffering from the contempt observed towards caricature and topical drawing. He listed some thirty masterpieces in the epic, comic or tragic genre of his ideal library, wishing to illustrate them in the same format as The Wandering Jew, Dante's Inferno, Perrault's Tales, Don Quixote, Homer, Virgil, Aristotle, Milton or Shakespeare.

The publishers refuse to produce these luxurious publications at too great a cost. Gustave Doré had to self-publish Dante's work in 1861. The critical and popular success salutes the striking congruity of the engravings on the text. A critic will affirm that :

"The author is crushed by the drawer. More than Dante illustrated by Doré, it is Doré illustrated by Dante."

From 1861 to 1868, he illustrated the Divine Comedy of Dante. Doré triumphed in particular by publishing L'Enfer in 1861, a luxurious work with Hachette. At the same time, Doré exhibited at the Salon three large paintings after the Divine Comedy, including his monumental canvas Dante and Virgil in the ninth circle of the Inferno, drawings, a landscape and photographs after his woodcuts, before their engraving.

Most critics will reproach, from this date, and in a recurring way to his painting to be only an enlarged illustration. In fact, Gustave Doré's painting influenced the illustration of his works of literature by the choice of formats, the sense of composition, the emphasis on the decor and his art of staging. Gustave Doré multiplied the points of view, in plunging, counter-plunging, panoramic or frontal shots with a search for maximum efficiency of the image. Gustave Doré was the first illustrator to use the image as an essential spring of suspense. According to Ray Harryhausen, famous special effects designer, "Gustave Doré would have been a great cinematographer, he looks at things from the camera's point of view." Indeed, in the engravings he devoted to the city of London, with its train stations and permanent crowds, the gaze is positioned to grasp and follow the constant movement.

In 1862, he published the Tales of Perrault and L'Album de Gustave Doré, his last collection of lithographs.

A long trip to Spain with Baron Charles Davillier on behalf of the newspaper Le Tour du monde allowed him to document his Don Quixote (1863, see volume 2), undertaken in September 1862 in Baden-Baden with the engraver Héliodore Pisan. In addition to the periodical publications, a book will be drawn from the trip to Spain: Spain, by Charles Davillier with 309 woodcuts by Doré, published in 1874. And the plates on bullfights will be republished later under the title La Tauromachie de Gustave Doré.

In the 1860s, he illustrated the Bible. In 1866, his monumental Holy Bible in two volumes (see also volume 2) is published as well as Paradise Lost of Milton (at Cassell) consecrate his reputation in England.

At the same time, Doré focused more and more on painting. In April, he moved to a new, much larger studio at 3, rue Bayard (8th arrondissement).

In 1861 and 1862 he made a trip to Spain with Baron Jean Charles Davillier. The account of the trip was published in the magazine Le Tour du Monde, with engravings, true documents of daily life in this country, as well as bullfights.

He then frequented the society and expanded his pictorial activities, composing large paintings such as Dante and Virgil in the Ninth Circle of Hell (1861 - 311 × 428 cm - Musée de Brou), The Enigma (in the Musée d'Orsay), and Christ Leaving the Praetorium (1867-1872 - 600 × 900 cm - Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg).

After two applications by Saintine, on August 13, 1861, he was decorated as a Knight of the Legion of Honor.

In 1863, he participated in the first edition of the National Society of Fine Arts.

During the visit of the Queen of England to the Universal Exhibition in Paris, he met the London journalist William Blanchard Jerrold, with whom he actively collaborated around 1870.

The Doré Gallery and the Paris Commune (1867-1871)

In 1869, in London, where his Bible was a huge success, a Doré Gallery opened at 35 New Bond Street, for which he produced numerous religious paintings that would later travel to the United States.

In 1870, he joined the National Guard to defend Paris from the Prussian army and produced several patriotic paintings until 1871. During the Paris Commune, he took refuge in Versailles.

He published London: A Pilgrimage by Blanchard Jerrold, in 1872, his art of composition reaches its peak in this true reportage on the London of the late nineteenth century where all social classes are present, his inspiration is particularly bright in the description of the London slums.

Multiplying at the same time drawings and illustrations of all kinds (fantasy, portrait-charges), his fame extends to Europe, he meets a huge success in England with the Doré Gallery opened in London in 1868 at 168 New Bond Street.

In 1875, the illustration of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner published in London by the Doré Gallery is one of his greatest masterpieces.

End of life (1877-1883)

He died of a heart attack at the age of 51, on January 23, 1883, leaving behind an impressive body of work of more than ten thousand pieces, which would later have a strong influence on many illustrators. His friend Marshal Foch organized the funeral at Sainte-Clotilde, the burial at Père-Lachaise and a farewell meal at 73 rue Saint-Dominique.

His mother died in 1879. Paradoxically, Gustave Doré approached his work as an illustrator in the guise of a painter while his painting was constantly judged according to his talent as an illustrator. This judgment affected Gustave Doré terribly, despairing of being recognized as a painter. Throughout his artistic career, Gustave Doré had an equal commitment to painting and illustration without seeing any incompatibility. It was not until his last ten years that he approached illustration as an activity that allowed him to finance "his colors and his brushes".

Evolution of his pictorial style

Marie Jeanne Geyer's remark sums up Gustave Doré's artistic career perfectly:

"However, it is in the shadow of painting that Gustave Doré invented, in spite of himself, a modern imagery in which appears, through an innovative and expressive drawing and settings condensing all the dramatic tension of a story, a new way of apprehending the illustration. All of Doré's modernity consists in this distance from the illustrated text and in the invention of a particular language that seems to strangely precede the story by letting a definitive image emerge."

Gustave Doré and engraving

Gustave Doré's work is recognized by his engravings, yet he engraved very little himself during his life, although he was very comfortable with this technique. He left it to skilled engravers, including Adolphe Gusman. His own creations of prints, lithography or etching represent a very small percentage of his work as an illustrator, his interest in these techniques corresponds to the vogue that these techniques enjoyed successively at the time Doré practiced them.

Works written and illustrated by Gustave Doré

Gustave Doré illustrated more than a hundred works, in particular :

As well as books on bullfighting:

Contrary to what is sometimes said, Gustave Doré - a friend of Hetzel - did not illustrate any of Jules Verne's Extraordinary Journeys.

Compilations, books and posthumous collections

We note the disappearance of a series of 12 paintings by the artist.

Drawings

Among the great contemporary interpreters and collaborators of Doré are Louis Paul Pierre Dumont, Octave Jahyer, François Pannemaker, Héliodore Pisan.

The tales of Perrault

In 1931, Henri Leblanc published a catalog raisonné which listed 9,850 illustrations, 68 music titles, 5 posters, 51 original lithographs, 54 washes, 526 drawings, 283 watercolors, 133 paintings and 45 sculptures.

"Paris as it is," a set of twelve colossal canvases now lost. Doré almost sold them to two Americans around 1853.

Public collections

"This twenty-year-old boy will be the greatest painter of the age, if he isn't already."

- Théophile Gautier in 1855 reported by Nadar

"Even his physique annoys and is unpleasant to me; he is a fat, fresh, poupin man, the round, flat face, a figure of the moon, of a magic lantern; his complexion of an altar boy, his ageless countenance, where the frightening labor of his production has not put in years, this air of a child prodigy - all of this is of an unsympathetic contact to me and ends up making me uncomfortable."

- Edmond de Goncourt in 1866

"No, no tragedy has ever moved me so much! No, there was not on the pavement of Paris a more unhappy man than this one: he was disgusted with everything; he should not have been told about his glory as an illustrator; it was precisely that from which he suffered the most. His illustrations were always thrown at his head to kill the painter."

- Albert Wolff around 1884

"Because you have to stay true to your figure! Mine suits me if it is because of her That I deplore foolishness! Who would draw me a good war harness? I do not trust the taste of the antique dealer, And Gustave Doré is no more! "

- Edmond Rostand in Les Musardises

Posterity

Gustave Doré is the direct or indirect source of inspiration for several generations of illustrators, but also for filmmakers (Le Voyage dans la Lune by Georges Méliès in 1902, Dante's Inferno by Henry Otto in 1924, La Belle et la Bête by Jean Cocteau in 1946, Star Wars by George Lucas in 1977, The Adventures of Baron Münchhausen by Terry Gilliam in 1988)

Sources

1. Gustave Doré
2. Gustave Doré
3. Henri Leblanc, « Catalogue de l’œuvre complet de Gustave Doré : illustrations, peintures, dessins, sculptures, eaux-fortes, lithographies : avec un portrait et 29 illustrations documentaires », sur Gallica, 1887 (consulté le 25 mars 2019), p. 4.
4. Blanche Roosevelt, La vie et les œuvres de Gustave Doré, d'après les souvenirs de sa famille, de ses amis et de l'auteur, 1887 (lire en ligne), p. 14.
5. Blanche Roosevelt, op. cit., p. 22.
6. Louis N. Panel, « Gustave Doré à Strasbourg: les années de formation d’un enfant prodige », Regards,‎ octobre 2019, p. 9.
7. ^ Gustave Doré (1832-1883). La fantasia al potere, su musee-orsay.fr, Museo d'Orsay. URL consultato il 16 febbraio 2017 (archiviato dall'url originale il 17 febbraio 2017).
8. ^ a b Il XIX secolo: il Neoclassicismo, il Romanticismo, il Realismo, l'Impressionismo, in Storia Universale dell'Arte, vol. 8, De Agostini, p. 287, ISBN 88-402-0891-7.
9. ^ a b c d e f Gustave Doré (1832-1883). La fantasia al potere, su musee-orsay.fr, Museo d'Orsay. URL consultato il 4 marzo 2019 (archiviato dall'url originale il 6 marzo 2019).
10. ^ Gustave Doré at the Encyclopædia Britannica
11. ^ Mayor, Hyatt A., Prints and People, Metropolitan Museum of Art/Princeton, 1971, no. 677, ISBN 0691003262
12. ^ Lyons, Martin (2011). Books: A Living History. Los Angeles: Getty Publications. p. 135. ISBN 978-1-60606-083-4.
13. ^ Rose, Cynthia. 2020. J. J. Grandvill: A Matter of Line and Death. The Comics Journal. (accessed 19 July 2022)
14. ^ "Books: A Living History" by Martin Lyons
15. Doré, Gustave. «Doré en el Museo de Orsay». Museo de Orsay. Archivado desde el original el 5 de marzo de 2016. Consultado el 18 de agosto de 2015.
16. «Biblia ilustrada por Doré (en inglés).». Archivado desde el original el 17 de marzo de 2015. Consultado el 28 de noviembre de 2005.