Gustave Doré - part 16

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.

This is part 16 of a 25-part series on later works of Gustave Doré:

1870 Jean de La Fontaine's Fables, continued from part 15:

The Sick Stag.

The Stag and the Vine.

The Swallow and the Little Birds.

The Torrent and the River.

The Town Rat and the Country Rat.

The Two Adventurers and the Talisman.

The Two Dogs and the Dead Ass.

The Two Goats.

The Two Mules.

The Two Pigeons.

The Vultures and the Pigeons.

The Wolf and the Lamb.

The Wolf turned Shepherd.

The Wolf, the Mother and the Child.

The Wolves and the Sheep.

The Woodman and Mercury

The Young Widow

The Wolf and the Hunter.

Tircis and Amaranth

Two Rats, the Fox, and the Egg.

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1873 Derby Day
black, grey, and white ink over black crayon 97.7 x 72.3 cm
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angels, CA

1873 Lord's
wood engraving 19.7 x 25 cm (image)
Harper's Weekly Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA

1873 Scottish Landscape
black crayon and brush and brown and grey wash, with touches of pen and black ink, on cream laid paper
28.1 x 44 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1873 The Fairies - a scene drawn from William Shakespeare
pen and ink and watercolour 40.6 x 69.2 cm

c1873 Pantagruel's Childhood
pen and ink, watercolour and touches of white gouache
36 x 47.8 cm
Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg
© Photo musées de Strasbourg

1875 The Christian Martyrs
steel engraving by Herbert Bourne (after Doré)
56.2 x 82.3 cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

c1875 Flower Sellers of London
oil on canvas 221 x 134.6 cm
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK

1876 An Alpine Valley with Trees and Boulders
watercolour, gouache and black chalk, with pen and black ink, over traces of graphite on wove paper 45.1 x 31.7 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1876 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge:

Title Page

Frontispiece

The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone,
He cannot chuse (choose) but hear.

The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she.

The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.

And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold.

Ship in Ice
59 x 45 cm
Probably a study for the above

The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around.

It ate the the food it ne'er had cut.

I shot the Albatross.

And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work 'em woe.

Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

About, about, in reel and rout,
 The death-fires danced at night.

Nine fathom deep he had followed us,
 From the land of mist and snow.

1A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!
And still it neared and neared.

"The game is done! I've won, I've won!"
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eye.

And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.

I looked upon the rotting sea
And drew my eyes away…

Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.

The moving moon went up the sky.

Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes.

And the rain poured from one black cloud.

They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their  eyes.

It ceased: yet still the sails made on
A pleasant noise till noon.

It flung the blood into my head,
And I fell down on a wound.

I heard, and and in my soul discerned
Two voices in the air.

But why drives on that ship so fast,
Without or wave or wind?

And on the bay the moonlight lay,
And the shadow of the moon.

Full many shapes, that shadows were,
 In crimson colours came.

This seraph-band, each waved his hand,
It was a heavenly sight!

Under the water it rumbled on,
Still louder and more dread.

Upon the whirl, where sank the ship,
The boat spun round and round.

I moved my lips - the Pilot shrieked
And fell down in a fit…

"Oh shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!"

I pass like night, from land to land,
I have strange power of speech.

That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me.

What loud uproar bursts from that door!
The wedding-guests are there.

So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar, is gone

"By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?"