Gustave Doré - part 12

Our visual image of Victorian London is largely fixated on its sordidness—cramped streets, dark alleys, desolate slums, overcrowding, and illicit dens. Two people are responsible for creating in our heads such pictures of destitution and filth—one is Charles Dickens, whose works largely revolved around grinding poverty, and the other is French illustrator Gustave Doré. Doré (1832 – 1883) was a prolific engraver, artist, illustrator, and sculptor, who became very popular both in France and England by being an extremely successful illustrator for books and magazine.

He began his career early—at the age of fifteen—working for the French paper Le journal pour rire. Before he was twenty-five, his illustrations had adorned the books of several prominent writers of his time such as Cervantes, Rabelais, Balzac, Milton, Byron, and Dante. His illustrations of Cervantes's Don Quixote left such an indelible impression on the collective imagination of the public that it forever changed how subsequent artists, stage and film directors would represent the various characters in the book in their medium. Doré's illustrations for the English Bible in 1866 was such great success that it earned him a major exhibition of his work in London, eventually leading to the foundation of his very own Dore Gallery.

In 1869, Dore teamed up with journalist Blanchard Jerrold to produce a comprehensive portrait of London. For the next four years, Jerrold and Dore explored the dark underbelly of the largest, most fashionable, and most prosperous city in the world, visiting night refuges, staying in cheap lodging houses and making rounds of the opium den. The duo were often accompanied by plain-clothes policemen. They travelled up and down the river and attended fashionable events at Lambeth Palace, the boat race and the Derby.

Note: Doré produced so much work that I  will feature his work in two tranches. This first series features works by Doré from 1847 to 1870. A later series will feature works from 1867 to 1883.

This is part 12 of a 12-part series on the earlier works of Gustave Doré:

1867 Fables of La Fontaine:

Front Cover

Title Page

Frontispiece

The Grasshopper and the Ant.

The two mules.

The swallow and the little birds.

The town rat and the country rat.

The wolf and the lamb.

The robbers and the ass.

Death and the woodcutter.

The wolf turned shepherd.

The Council held by the rats.

The lion and the rat.

The hare and the frogs.

The peacock complaining to Juno.

The Miller, his son, and the Ass.

The frogs who asked for a King.

The wolves and the sheep.

The old woman and her servants.

The cat and the old rat.

The lion in love.

The shepherd and the sea.

The monkey and the dolphin.

The miser who lost his treasure.

The eye of the Master.

The wolf, the mother, and the child.

The lark and her little ones.

The woodman and Mercury.

The little fish and the fisherman.

The horse and the wolf.

Fortune and the little child.

The Doctors.

The hen with the golden eggs.

The stag and the vine.

The eagle and the owl.

The bear and the two friends.

The stag viewing himself in the stream.

The countryman and the serpent.

The carter stuck in the mud.

The young widow.

The oak and the reed.

The lion and the gnat.

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1868 A backstreet in London
graphite with stumping on wove paper 27.7 x 20.9 cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1869 Tavern in Whitechapel
gouache, Indian Ink and white 25.5 x 35.9 cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

1869-71 Christian Martyrs
black chalk and brown washes, heightened with white, on wove paper 60.9 x 50.1 cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

c1869 The Lion
etching printed in black ink on laid paper 14.6 x 21.6 cm (plate)
Detroit Institute of Arts, MI

before 1870 Paolo and Francesca da Rimini
oil on canvas 280.7 x 194.3 cm

1870 Deer in a Forest Landscape
oil on canvas 131.1 x 97.6 cm

1870 La Marseillaise
black chalk, charcoal, pen and brown ink, brown and grey wash, watercolour, gouache 75 x 99.8 cm

c1870 The Injured Child
oil on canvas 68.5 x 46 cm

c1870 The Shades of French Soldiers from the Past Exhort the Army to Victory on the Rhine
brush and brown ink, black watercolour, and white gouache over graphite on wove paper 65.5 x 91 cm
 National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC