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Doré's Illustrations for Don Quixote

gustave doré

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"His Don Quixote … from its first to its last page [is] a marvel of imagination, poetry, sentiment, and sarcasm. . . . People still speak of it only as 'Doré's Don Quixote'." — Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré
Doré himself had something of Quixote's chivalry and spent an arduous life drafting impossible dreams; he knew fame as well as pain, disillusionment, and failure. At age 30 he was ready for Quixote and prepared to realize his dream of illustrating the world's great books.
Doré never became the painter he yearned to be, but he came very close to realizing his desired intimacy with the classics. His sympathy with Cervantes' satire was so close that, of the numerous Quixote interpretations by many outstanding artists, Doré's has become the standard. The French translation of Cervantes that Doré illustrated is forgotten; here is the memorable remnant of that work — all 120 full-page plates, plus a selection of 70 characteristic headpiece and tailpiece vignettes.
As can be seen in the backgrounds, Doré was ready professionally as well as emotionally for Quixote. He had traveled through Spain preparing an earlier work, and his graphic memory was as strong and indelible as that of another great Quixote interpreter, Picasso. From Sancho's village through Spanish hills and dry plateaus, in the Pyrenees and by the sea, in rural castles and Barcelona luxury, Doré illuminated the seventeenth-century setting with a nineteenth-century acquaintance with the scene. Doré was also a careful student of Renaissance costume and architecture; his minutiae, so copious, are invariably correct.
Captions written especially for this edition describe the action with reference to the original Spanish text, capturing high points of the story. But of course Doré conveys it all in a picture: the famous windmill charge, traversing the Sierra Morena, battling the Knight of the White Moon, visions of giants, dragons, flaming lakes, and damsels, the Dulcinea never found, all in full-page wood engravings. Doré's marvelous penchant for ghostly effects in panoramic landscapes and seascapes finds large scope here, carefully engraved by one of the best of his longtime studio engravers, H. Pisano.
Doré's Man of la Mancha glows with the artist's own enchantment and humor. Artists and illustration aficionados will add this royalty-free volume to other Dover editions of Doré's works — art he created to stand with great literature that now stands alone. Doré's Quixote indeed stands alone, unique among the knights and graphic castles in Spain.

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,2015

This edition

Format
160 pages, Paperback
Published
July 1, 1982 by Dover Publications
ISBN
9780486243009
ASIN
0486243001
Language
English

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About the author

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gustave doré

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The most popular and successful French book illustrator of the mid 19th century. Doré became very widely known for his illustrations to such books as Dante's Inferno (1861), Don Quixote (1862), and the Bible (1866), and he helped to give European currency to the illustrated book of large . He was so prolific that at one time he employed more than forty blockcutters. His work is characterized by a rather naïve but highly spirited love of the grotesque and represents a commercialization of the Romantic taste for the bizarre. Drawings of London done in 1869-71 were more sober studies of the poorer quarters of the city and captured the attention of van Gogh. In the 1870s he also took up painting (doing some large and ambitions religious works) and sculpture (the monument to the dramatist and novelist Alexandre Dumas in the Place Malesherbes in Paris, erected in 1883, is his work).

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Rating(4.5 / 5.0, 18 votes)
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18 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
_Mataga_
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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It is a book completely full of the 190 illustrations from Don Quixote (120 of them full-page), all of the ones by Doré. I spent a pleasant afternoon studying the details and seeing the whole story come to life on these pages without any text other than that in the captions for the sketches. These were recently republished 100 years after the finish of Doré's fifty-one years of life. Its size allows for careful inspection of the illustrations, at 9 inches by 12 inches. 155 pages contain illustrations.
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
Tsundere700
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Gustave Dore's illustrations were created for an 1863 French translation of the Cervante's classic. Dore's quickly became the definitive drawings for Don Quixote. A splendid companion piece to Cervante's most famous work.
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
taztinky
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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لقد أبدع غوستاف دوريه في تصوير دون كيشوت أيما إبداع
مثير جدا أن ترى ما تخيلته واقعا
تخيلنا دون كيشوت من خلال كلمات سرفانتس وكذلك فعل دوريه
فدأب على تصوير ملحمة سيرفانتس برسوم غاية في الأناقة ، حيوية ،نابضة بالمشاعر ،الفرح والحزن والالم والخوف والقلق كلها بادية في الرسوم
أنصح على الاطلاع على مجموعة دوريه بالتزامن مع قراءة دون كيشوت لإثراء التجربة
أحب رسومات دوريه كثيرا، نجحت في إحياء الشخصيات
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
s4r4h00z
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Exquisite!!! Gives life to Cervante’s text and is a very nice companion to the first modern Western novel.
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