Mundell Christian Church - Biography of Gustave Dorè

Paul Gustave Dorè photographed by Felix Nadar 1855-1859

Paul Gustave Dorè's Life:
Dorè was born in Strasbourg France and his first illustrated story was published at the age of fifteen. Dorè began work as a literary illustrator in Paris. Dorè commissions include works by Rabelais, Balzac, Milton and Dante. In 1853 Dorè 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. Dorè also illustrated an oversized edition of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven."

Dorè's English Bible (1866) was a great success, and in 1867 Dorè had a major exhibition of his work in London. This exhibition led to the foundation of the Dorè Gallery in New Bond Street.

In 1869, Blanchard Jerrold, the son of Douglas William Jerrold, suggested that they work together to produce a comprehensive portrait of London. Jerrold had gotten the idea from The Microcosm of London produced by Rudolph Ackermann, William Pyne, and Thomas Rowlandson in 1808.

Dorè signed a five-year project with the publishers Grant & Co that involved his staying in London for three months a year. He was paid the vast sum of £10,000 a year for his work. The book, London: A Pilgrimage, with 180 engravings, was published in 1872.

London: A Pilgrimage enjoyed commercial success, but the work was disliked by many contemporary critics. Some critics were concerned with the fact that Dorè appeared to focus on poverty that existed in London. Dorè was accused by the Art Journal of "inventing rather than copying." The Westminster Review claimed that "Dorè gives us sketches in which the commonest, the vulgarest external features are set down."

London: A Pilgrimage was a financial success, and Dorè received commissions from other British publishers. Dorè's later works included Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Milton's Paradise Lost, Tennyson's The Idylls of the King, The Works of Thomas Hood, and The Divine Comedy. His work also appeared in the Illustrated London News. Dorè continued to illustrate books until his death in Paris in 1883. He is buried in the city's Père Lachaise Cemetery

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Paul Gustave Dorè (January 6, 1832 – January 23, 1883) was a French artist, engraver, and illustrator. Dorè worked primarily with wood engraving and steel engraving.

The Artist:
Gustave Dorè was an Alsacian artist who specialized in book illustrations. Born in Strasbourg, France, on January 6, 1832, he began his artistic career in Paris when he was only 15 years old. His drawings and illustrations were groundbreaking and very popular, although he never won the acclaim of the artistic elite in France. In his later years, he spent much time in London, where he also opened a very popular gallery. He died on January 23, 1883, at the age of 51.

Dorè is probably most famous for his depictions of numerous scenes from the Bible, but he also produced illustrations for many other books, including Milton, Dante, La Fontaine, Don Quixote, Baron Munchhausen, etc.

The Bible Illustrations:
Dorè and the artisans in his studios produced hundreds of different woodcuts illustrating scenes from a wide variety of biblical stories from both the Old Testament (including the Apocrypha) and the New Testament.

His biblical illustrations were first published in 1865 in France and reprinted in the late 1860's in various German, English, and other editions. These large-folio multi-volume Bibles (with about 240 illustrations each) were very heavy and expensive, but smaller editions were soon also published. Most of the illustrations are identical in the various editions, but some illustrations are not found in certain language editions, and in other cases as slightly different illustration is found for the same biblical passage.

Dorè's illustrations were extremely popular in both Europe and America in the last decades of the nineteenth century. For example, over 1.5 million people visited the Dorè Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1896. Several publishers also printed smaller collections of his biblical illustrations without the complete text of the Bible in so-called "Dorè Bible Gallery" editions.

His artistic style greatly influenced some of the early biblical films, especially those of D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille. In fact, some of the scenes from DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1923 & 1956) look remarkably similar to the corresponding biblical illustration by Dorè.

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