Finding Doré
(I could not resist that title, I just could NOT…)
This picture is very dramatic, but it also cracks me up because that lady has had it with their nonsense.
Gustave Doré is the first artist that I remember being completely captivated by as a kid. We had the Dover illustrated edition of Perrault’s fairytales, and I remember reading it over and over again and being shocked at how visceral (and terrifying, whew, that ogre…) the pictures were, but also how opulent and enchanting and detailed. Every frame practically burst with drama and mystery, not to mention castles. Lots of castles. And creepy trees. It was my thing to a tee.
Behold a Doré castle, where I would very much like to live:
Behold exceedingly creepy Doré trees:
And behold opulence. I remember this picture being one of my faves, and kid-me wanting that plump silk pillow on the floor, the one with the huge tassel.
Recently I’ve been on a bit of a Doré kick. I feel like I go on one every few years, but this year the kick was a little stronger than usual, rather more a violent pummeling, and I ordered a bunch of books, and looked into his life, and scrolled through endless numbers of prints, and made a big folder of his pictures on my computer, and then decided I wanted to colorize some of them, just to see how it would look.
When I think of Doré I think of black-and-white woodcuts, but he did paintings, too, (the magical wobbly painting on the landing page of this site is by Doré) and city illustrations, Edgar Allan Poe and Shakespeare and Baron Munchhausen. . . .
And so I compiled some of my new faves here, the ones I’d never seen before, and maybe you haven’t seen them either and will find them as delightful as I did. (I’m mostly uploading the colorized ones, as I think that was an interesting experiment and gave the pictures a whole new look. Some people might find them disgraceful, but I think it’s fun to see. I’ll link the originals at the bottom of this post, so you can see those, too.)
One of the illustrations for Baron Munchhausen. Unlike all the others here, this one hasn’t been turned into a woodcut yet and still shows in Doré’s original pen-and-ink line-work. (I was excited to find these, mostly because I love the whole Munchhausen story, with its underwater beasts and riding-of-cannonballs. I remember watching the Terry Gilliam version as a kid and being enraptured by all of the whimsy and strangeness. I do recommend the movie, I think. I haven’t seen it in ages, and the trailer makes it look quite bonkers and silly, but I remember the movie being rather enchanting.)
From Poe’s The Raven. I love how dramatic yet simple it is, especially compared to his usual full-to-the-edges pictures.
The colorizing didn’t really work on this one, but it’s one of my favorites. An unfinished woodcut, again for Poe.
Moon travel!
Castles! And also trees!
At first I was like “Is this even Doré?” but then I spotted the castle lurking there in the background, so rest easy, dear reader, it’s Doré.
And here is my very favorite, from Orlando Furioso, where our hero goes to the moon in a chariot. There are so many great ones from Orlando Furioso, all of which I’d never seen before. It made me want to read the book, which turned out to be a 16th century epic poem, originally in Italian, which is not really my thing, but I am soldiering through it! For the pictures! I mean, look at this. . .
And this:
And thiiis.
Ok, I’m done. I could add images all day. For more, I can heartily recommend taking a wander through the Wikimedia commons. It’s a treasure trove.