Gustave Doré was born on the sixth of January, 1832 at no 16, rue de la Nuée-Bleue, Strasbourg, Alsace.


Doré was one of those children who are never happier than when drawing on any surface in sight so his artistic talent was spotted early. By the age of fifteen, and while still at school, he was already working as an illustrator for the satirical newspaper Journal pour Rire.


Over the next few years, he drew more than one thousand cartoons for the newspaper and honed his skill for caricature. Later he branched out into illustrating the work of such famous literary figures as Dante, Rabelais, Milton, Ariosto, and many more.

While Doré's illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy are sober as befits the subject, for Don Quichotte, his caricatural skill comes to the fore, exactly suiting Cervantes' satire of the literature of chivalry:

a world of disorderly notions, picked out of his books, crowded into his imagination

His 379 drawings for the French translation of Don Quichotte were done around 1863 and demonstrate some of the characteristics that became part of his method: dispensing with a frame for his drawings, for example:

Don Quichotte destroys the puppet theatre frame and all ;-)

Doré also experimented with unusual angles and perspectives, sometimes viewing a scene almost from above:

or as if from below:


But Doré's life wasn't all devoted to comedy and caricature.

The huge body of illustration work was intended to fund a future career as a serious painter:

"Soir en Alsace"

Unfortunately, the art world of his day rated the illustrator higher than the painter and Doré never got an opportunity to devote himself entirely to painting. Like Don Quichotte and Sancho Panza, taking to the road again and again,

Doré pursued the career of illustrator into the sunset. The last book he illustrated before he died at the age of fifty-one was Poe's The Raven:

A collection of 190 of Gustave Doré's illustrations for Don Quixote published by the time he was thirty-one. Absolutely mind-blowing! While the detail and craftmanship are stunning, I was surprised to find a shift in my sense of the narrative tone.

In the first few images, I contemplated Doré's technique with light and dark. I remembered how the novel often depicted things happening at night that were monumental. How do night/obscurity relate to Don Quixote's sense of reality? And, of course, where is the line between reality and our Don's creation of his own story?

Doré's work seems to take a critical stance. Scenes sympathetic to Don Quixote's chivalric vision are incredibly intricate. They feel real. Tangible. By contrast, the scenes where the earthly world takes precedence are depicted in less sophisticated, almost cartoonish style. I'll be appreciating this artwork for a long time.

Doré's drawings, as usual, are a spectacular understanding of line and black and white contrast. I have yet to read Don Quijote but this book gives one a bit of an overview through the illustrations and captions. This is not a book to read as there is only a brief introduction followed by many illustrations engraved in woodblock.

Introduction

--Doré's Illustrations for Don Quixote

Author Biographies

آخرش هم نقاشیارو‌ زودتر از خود کتاب دیدم!
حالا نه بخاطر اینکه اسپویل بشم ولی دیگه دیدم دارم داستان رو خیلی کند میخونم گفتم نقاشیای دوره رو ببینم شاید انگیزه زودتر خوندن پیدا کردم. (کلن سرعتم برا چیزای طولانی خیلی کم شده جدیدن.)

the story was so beautifully illustrated and brought alive by each single illustration. this was the perfect complement to read don quixote along with and i need an edition with the illustrations incorporated asap!!! ah the end of such a beautiful journey feels so bittersweet. “vale!”