Paul Gustave Doré was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

, engraver, illustrator

Illustrator

An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...

 and sculptor

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

. Doré worked primarily with wood engraving

Wood engraving

Wood engraving is a technique in printmaking where the "matrix" worked by the artist is a block of wood. It is a variety of woodcut and so a relief printing technique, where ink is applied to the face of the block and printed by using relatively low pressure. A normal engraving, like an etching,...

 and steel engraving

Steel engraving

Steel engraving, is a commercial engraving technique for printing illustrations, based on steel instead of copper. It has been rarely used in artistic printmaking, although was much used for reproductions in the 19th century. Steel engraving was introduced in 1792 by Jacob Perkins , an American...

.

Biography

Doré was born in Strasbourg

Strasbourg

Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...

 and his first illustrated story was published at the age of fifteen. His talent was evident even earlier, however. At age five he had been a prodigy troublemaker, playing pranks that were mature beyond his years. Seven years later, he began carving in cement. Subsequently, as a young man, he began work as a literary illustrator in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, winning commissions to depict scenes from books by Rabelais, Balzac, Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

 and Dante

Dante Alighieri

Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...

.

In 1853, Doré was asked to illustrate the works of Lord Byron. This commission was followed by additional work for British publishers, including a new illustrated English Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

. A decade later, he illustrated a French edition of Cervantes

Cervantes

-People:*Alfonso J. Cervantes , mayor of St. Louis, Missouri*Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, 16th-century man of letters*Ignacio Cervantes, Cuban composer*Jorge Cervantes, a world-renowned expert on indoor, outdoor, and greenhouse cannabis cultivation...

's Don Quixote, and his depictions of the knight and his squire, Sancho Panza

Sancho Panza

Sancho Panza is a fictional character in the novel Don Quixote written by Spanish author Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in 1605. Sancho acts as squire to Don Quixote, and provides comments throughout the novel, known as sanchismos, that are a combination of broad humour, ironic Spanish proverbs,...

, 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. Doré also illustrated an oversized edition of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

's "The Raven

The Raven

"The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in January 1845. It is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow descent into madness...

", an endeavor that earned him 30,000 franc

Franc

The franc is the name of several currency units, most notably the Swiss franc, still a major world currency today due to the prominence of Swiss financial institutions and the former currency of France, the French franc until the Euro was adopted in 1999...

s from publisher Harper & Brothers

Harper & Brothers

Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins.-History:James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishing business J. & J. Harper in 1817. Their two brothers, Joseph Wesley Harper and Fletcher Harper, joined them...

 in 1883.

Doré's English Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 (1866) was a great success, and in 1867 Doré had a major exhibition of his work in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. This exhibition led to the foundation of the Doré Gallery in Covelant Bond Street. In 1869, Blanchard Jerrold, the son of Douglas William Jerrold

Douglas William Jerrold

Douglas William Jerrold was an English dramatist and writer.-Biography:Jerrold was born in London. His father, Samuel Jerrold, was an actor and lessee of the little theatre of Wilsby near Cranbrook in Kent. In 1807 Douglass moved to Sheerness, where he spent his childhood...

, 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

Rudolph Ackermann

Rudolph Ackermann was an Anglo-German bookseller, inventor, lithographer, publisher and businessman.- Biography :...

, William Pyne, and Thomas Rowlandson

Thomas Rowlandson

Thomas Rowlandson was an English artist and caricaturist.- Biography :Rowlandson was born in Old Jewry, in the City of London. He was the son of a tradesman or city merchant. On leaving school he became a student at the Royal Academy...

 in 1808. 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 really excelled as an artist with an individual vision.

The completed book, London: A Pilgrimage, with 180 engravings, was published in 1872. It enjoyed commercial and socioeconomical success, but the work was disliked by many contemporary critics. Some of these critics were concerned with 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." The Westminster Review claimed that "Doré gives us sketches in which the commonest, the vulgarest external features are set down." The book was a financial success, however, and Doré received commissions from other British publishers.

His later works included Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...

's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

's Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...

, Tennyson's The Idylls of the King

Idylls of the King

Idylls of the King, published between 1856 and 1885, is a cycle of twelve narrative poems by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson which retells the legend of King Arthur, his knights, his love for Guinevere and her tragic betrayal of him, and the rise and fall of Arthur's kingdom...

, The Works of Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood was a British humorist and poet. His son, Tom Hood, became a well known playwright and editor.-Early life:...

, and The Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature...

. His work also appeared in the Illustrated London News.

He continued to illustrate books until his death in Paris following a short illness. The city's Père Lachaise Cemetery contains his grave.

Gallery

Works

Doré was a prolific artist; thus the following list of works, though extensive, is by no means comprehensive (e.g. it does not include his sculptures, paintings, nor 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
1854	Rabelais	Oeuvres contenant la vie de Gargantua et celle de Pantagruel ... Gargantua and Pantagruel The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel is a connected series of five novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais. It is the story of two giants, a father and his son and their adventures, written in an amusing, extravagant, satirical vein...	1 vol. 4to.	Frontis. & 15	J.Bry Ainé, Paris
1855	Honoré de Balzac Honoré de Balzac Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....	Les Contes Drôlatiques		425	Société Générale de la Libraire, and in Le Journal pour Tous
1856		Fierabras d'Alexandrie, Légende Nationale traduite par Mary Lafon	1 vol in 8vo	123	Librairie Nouvelle
1856		Mémoires d'un Jeune Cadet, par Victor Percival		48
1856		La Légende du Juif Errant Wandering Jew The Wandering Jew is a figure from medieval Christian folklore whose legend began to spread in Europe in the 13th century. The original legend concerns a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and was then cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming...	1 vol. grand in folio	12 :Image:Wandering jew title page.jpg	Michel Lévy
1857	Dante Alighieri Dante Alighieri Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...	L'Enfer		70
1857 autumn	Ed. de La Bédollière	Nouveau Paris, Histoire de ses 20 Arrondissements	1 vol in 4to	150	Barba
1857 autumn	Valéry Vernier	Aline, Journal d'un Jeune Homme,		one large page	Dentu
1860–1862	Thomas Mayne Reid Thomas Mayne Reid Thomas Mayne Reid , was an Irish-American novelist. "Captain" Reid wrote many adventure novels akin to those written by Frederick Marryat and Robert Louis Stevenson. He was a great admirer of Lord Byron...	L'Habitation du Désert,	1 vol. in 16mo	60	Hachette
1860–1862	Ann S. Stevens	La Fille du Grand Chieftain	1 vol.	15
1860–1862	M. V. Victor	Flêche d'Or	1 vol.	13
1860–1862	E. S. Ellis	L'Ange des Frontières	1 vol.	10
1860–1862	N. W. Buxted	Les Vierges de la Forêt	1 vol.	10
1860	William Shakespeare William Shakespeare William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...	The Tempest The Tempest The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...	1 vol. in 4to		(London)
1861		Les Figures du Temps,	1 vol. in 12mo		(Paris)
1861	Plouvier and Vincent	Les Chansons d'Autrefois	in 12mo		Coulon and Pineau, Paris
1861	Edmond About Edmond François Valentin About Edmond François Valentin About was a French novelist, publicist and journalist.-Life:He was born at Dieuze, in the Moselle département in the Lorraine region of France. In 1848 he entered the École Normale, taking second place in the annual competition for admission in which Hippolyte Taine came...	Le Roi des Montagnes	1 vol. in 8vo	157	Hachette and Co., Paris
1862	Saintine	Les Mythologies du Rhin	1 vol. in 8vo	165	Hachette and Co., Paris
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
1862	Malte-Brun Conrad Malte-Brun Conrad Malte-Brun , born Malthe Conrad Bruun, was a Danish-French geographer and journalist. His second son, Victor Adolphe Malte-Brun, was also a geographer.-Biography:...	Les États Unis et le Mexique	1 vol. in 4to		Brun, Paris
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
1866		Aventures du Baron de Münchausen, traduction nouvelle par Théophile Gautier Théophile Gautier Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, art critic and literary critic....  fils	1 vol.		(London)
1863	M. Épiné	Légende de Croquemitaine	1 vol. in 4to	177	Hachette
1863	Gastineau	La Chasse au Lion et à la Panthère	1 vol. in 8vo		Hachette and Co.
1863	Miguel de Cervantes Miguel de Cervantes Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written...	Don Quixote de la Mancha translation by Louis Viardot	2 vols. folio	370	Hachette and Co., Paris, and Cassell and Co., London
1863		Les Contes de Perrault or in Spanish Los Cuentos de Perrault		100+	Hetzels. in Spanish by Ledouse
1865	Gastineau	De Paris en Afrique	1 vol. in 12mo		(Paris)
1865	A. Masse	L'Histoire d'un Minute	1 vol., 12mo		(Paris)
1866	Victor Hugo Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....	Travailleurs de la Mer			Sampson Low and Co., London
1865	E. Edgar	Cressy and Poictiers	1 vol. in 8vo	50+	(London)
1865	Thomas Moore	L'Épicurien (French translation)	in 8vo		(Paris)
1865		Falmy Realm	in folio		(London)
1865	Quatrelles	Le Chevalier Beautemps	grand in 8vo		(Paris)
1865	Chateaubriand François-René de Chateaubriand François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand was a French writer, politician, diplomat and historian. He is considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature.-Early life and exile:...	Atala	2 vols, grand folio	80	Hachette Edition
1866	Théophile Gautier Théophile Gautier Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, art critic and literary critic....	Le Capitaine Fracasse	1 vol. grand in 8vo	60	Charpentier
1866	G. La Bédollière	Histoire de la Guerre en Mexique	in 4to		(Paris)
1867	Dante Alighieri Dante Alighieri Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...	Il Purgatorio ed il Paradiso			Hachette and Co.
1866	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.
1866		La Sainte Bible, according to the Vulgate, new translation	2 vols. grand in folio	200+	Mame, Tours; Cassell and Co., England
1866	John Milton John Milton John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...	Paradise Lost Paradise Lost Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...			Cassell and Co.
1867	La Bédollière	La France et la Russie			(Paris)
1867		Les Fables de Lafontaine	2 vols. in folio	8 large and 250 small plates	Hachette and Co.
1867		Les Pays-bas et la Belgique	in 8vo		(Paris)
1870	Thomas Hood	(Poems)	2 vols. in folio		Ward and Lock, London
1870	Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...	The Rime of the Ancient Mariner The Rime of the Ancient Mariner The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–98 and was published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Modern editions use a later revised version printed in 1817 that featured a gloss...	grand in 4to	40 large and 3 small drawings
1873		New edition of Rabelais	2 vols. in folio		Paris : Garnier; London: Chatto and Windus
1876	Louis Énault	London	1 vol. in 4to	174 wood engravings	Hachette and Co.
1874	Baron Ch. Davilliers	L'Espagne	in 4to	309 wood-engravings	Hachette and Co.; London: Sampson Low and Co.
1875	Michaud Joseph François Michaud Joseph François Michaud was a French historian and publicist.He was born at Albens, Savoie, educated at Bourg-en-Bresse, and afterwards engaged in literary work at Lyon, where the French Revolution first aroused the strong dislike of revolutionary principles which manifested itself throughout the...	Histoire des Croisades	2 vol. medium folio	100 grand compositions	Paris: Hachette and Co.
	Alfred Tennyson	Idylls of the King Idylls of the King Idylls of the King, published between 1856 and 1885, is a cycle of twelve narrative poems by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson which retells the legend of King Arthur, his knights, his love for Guinevere and her tragic betrayal of him, and the rise and fall of Arthur's kingdom...
1877	Ariosto	Orlando Furioso Orlando Furioso Orlando Furioso is an Italian epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto which has exerted a wide influence on later culture. The earliest version appeared in 1516, although the poem was not published in its complete form until 1532...		36 drawings	Hachette and Co. (London: Ward and Lock)
1884	Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...	The Raven The Raven "The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in January 1845. It is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow descent into madness...		26 steel engravings	London: Sampson Low and Co., New York: Harper and Co.

External links

• Doré's grave site at Cimetière du Père Lachaise
• German FTP with Dore illustrations
• Gustave Doré Bible Tarot - tarot cards based on his biblical illustrations
• Dore Bible Gallery
• Art Passions Doré online gallery
• Gallery of Illustrations by Gustave Doré (24 MByte PDF with 120 illustrations)
• SurLaLune Fairy Tale Illustrations of Gustave Doré
• Bible Illustrations by G. Dore, Christian website compiling Dore's numerous Biblical illustrations
• The "Dore Vase" in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, a massive bronze that was exhibited to acclaim at Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and later moved to San Francisco
• Dore-illustrations (Bible, Dante, Ariosto, Rabelais, Milton, Cervantes, Tennyson, Poe, crusades, sketches) in the "History of Art"
• World of Dante Doré Dante illustrations in the World of Dante gallery
• Doré's illustrations for several books
• Elbert Hubbard
  Elbert Hubbard
  Elbert Green Hubbard was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher. Raised in Hudson, Illinois, he met early success as a traveling salesman with the Larkin soap company. Today Hubbard is mostly known as the founder of the Roycroft artisan community in East Aurora, New York, an...
  
  's account of the life of Gustave Doré
• Old Testament
• New Testament
• Milton - Paradise Lost
• Lafontaine' Fables
• Fairytales
• Michaud - Crusades
• Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quijote
• Edgar Poe - Raven