» Gustave Doré Biographyby Susan Belmont - October 5, 2003 |
Gustave Doré was the most popular illustrator not only of the 19th century, but also of all time. He was a classic workaholic, a modest man that did his works for the people and a genius who was sure of at least one thing: his own talent.
The Young Prince Of Art
Doré was born in Strasbourg, France in 1832 and at a very early age, he already used to draw. By age 12 he used to carve his own lithographic stones to produce illustrations that accompanied the stories he created. By that time, one of the greatest illustrators of France, J. Grandville met him and predicted that he would become a great artist.
At age 14 he went to Paris with his family and once when walking down a street, he saw the store of a publishing company and there were several engravings displayed at the shop window.
Next morning, he went back there, entered the office and told the publisher Charles Philipon: "This is how those illustrations should have been done", showing his versions of the illustrations at the shop window.
In spite of the impulsive and somewhat arrogant manners of Doré, Philipon loved his illustrations, but before Doré was hired by him, he had to prove to the publisher and to other members of his office that he was the one who had done those illustrations, because they couldn't believe that a teenager had done those quality works. One year later Doré was the highest paid illustrator of France.
One of the most impressive qualities of his talent was that he could work very fast and no matter how many drawings he did per day, all of them were special and were well-finished.
Doré's illustrations appeared first in a weekly satire newspaper called "Journal Pour Rire", then Philipon decided to publish a collection of his drawings that was also a satire called "The Labours of Hercules" in 1847. With the success of these two works, soon Doré was the talk of the city and he was nicknamed by the poet Theophile Gautier as "Boy Genius".
His Golden Years
From 1854 on, he started to produce illustrations to editions of classics of literature, as to those of Balzac's and Rabelais' books.
In the 1860s, he decided to do a more daring and complex work. By that time he was working for the main publisher of France, Louis Hachette and Doré told him that he wanted to do illustrations to a new edition of Dante's Divine Comedy.
As Hachette was skeptic about the success of the project, Doré offered to pay for the expenses of the edition, leaving Hachette with the print work and distribution. It was published in early 1861, and in two weeks it was the most famous book of the moment.
These illustrations were important not only because through them Doré started to be known throughout the world, but also because they formed the imagery of the Gothic world as we have it today, especially the Inferno's illustrations.
After this work, Doré continued to illustrate classics of literature, this time Miguel de Cervantes'
"Don Quixote", several fairy tales books, among others, and then he again decided to work on a bigger and more important project.
This time he wanted to make illustrations to the Bible. The 1865 edition of the Old Testament that had his illustrations was so famous that even Mark Twain mentioned it in his novel "Tom Sawyer"! After this, he did illustrations to new editions of Milton's
"Paradise Lost" and to books of the English poet Lord Alfred Tennyson.
From Life To Legend
Doré was an almost tireless workaholic. Through his lifetime, he did more than 10,000
works. But no matter how much he worked, he still felt the need to do more, and by the late 1860s, he decided to venture in painting.
Through the rest of his life, he would face a great resistance from the French art critics, because they considered him as being a marvelous illustrator, but when it came to painting, they never recognized his value. They always found a way to criticize him.
For this reason, Doré got more respect for his painting outside his homeland, especially in England. In 1867, some rich merchants opened a gallery that was called "The Doré Gallery" in London in which his canvases were displayed and he started to spent the greatest part of the year in England instead of France.
His first commission was to do a large painting based on his Bible illustrations, and he enjoyed working on it so much that he did a series of them. These paintings were so admired throughout the world that in 1896 in Chicago, thousands of Americans went to visit an exposition of his paintings and this was something unforeseen at that time, because Americans didn't care much about art then.
Another boundary he crossed in the early 1870s was the sculpture one, which ironically was better received by the French artistic society than his paintings had been, but even so, the full value of his works would only be recognized after his death.
He continued to work on illustrations to books, and the themes went from The Crusades to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven". He died in Paris in 1883, at age 51.
As Doré started his career at a very early age, he met some of the greatest artists of all times. His friends were people that now are legendary, such as the writers
Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac, playwrights as Alfred de Musset and Edmund Ronstand, musicians as Franz Liszt and Hector Berlioz, etc.
He had long-term relationships with two of the greatest women artists of their fields, one was Adelina Patti, who was one of the greatest lyric singers of the 19th century and the other was Sarah Bernhardt, who was the greatest actress of the history of the French theater.
When considering his work, you can wonder how a man who never had any art lessons in his life, and who apart from that suffered from asthma and who developed heart problems in his 40s, could have done so much and so well?
His critics loved to use his qualities against him, out of envy most probably. They used to point Doré's custom of not bothering to use models or to make previous sketches of the subjects he drew as something that should be seen as negative, when these were amazing aspects of his ability.
But I think that what really matters is that his works have survived all the critiques and nowadays they can be found on the least expected places, as in movies like "Amstad", "Seven" and "Great Expectations". Long live the legend!
If you want more information:
Artcyclopedia: Gustave Doré Online
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Copyright © 2003 Susan Belmont