Doré's Illustrations for Don Quixote

by Gustave Doré

Gustave Doré's sympathy to Cervantes' satire was so complete that, of the numerous interpretations by many artists, his has become standard. Here are 190 wood-engraved plates, charging the windmill, traversing Spanish plains, valleys, mountains, ghostly visions of dragons, knights, flaming lake. Marvelous detail, minutiae, accurate costumes, architecture, enchantment, pathos, humor. This a very large leather bound book that contains Cervantes' text and the illustrations at full size.

Genres: Art, Classics, Fiction, France, Graphic Novels, Art History, Novels

160 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

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).

Reviews

[Kalliope · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the name of Gustave Doré (1832-1883), the illustrations of Dante, of Ariosto and of Cervantes come first to mind. He also carried out others now less well known, such as Paradise Lost, the Bible and Rabelais. Doré had embarked at an early age, in his twenties, to illustrate the great books of Western culture.

But while with other works we can also think of other major illustrators who vie with Doré for stamping on our minds the visual equivalent to text-- for we also have, in the case of Dante Botticelli’s, Blake’s and Dalí’s astounding series--with Cervantes Doré has imprinted the definite image. And even if he has somewhat falsified Quijote’s looks, since he continues to hat the chivalric hero with the barber’s basin in the Second part of the book, when Quijote no longer wore it, it does not really matter. For us now, thanks to Doré, Quijote always wore his back.

This is an extraordinary selection of the total of 379 illustrations of the original collection. It includes the full 120 large, folio size, engravings, as well as 70 of the smaller ones.

This edition comes with a very brief preface which mentions other illustrators. The main ones were the also French Antoine Coypel (1661-1722), and a couple of examples of his are enough to disconcert the modern reader, so fixed are we with Doré’s version.



or, even in an engraved version, medium which we now also come to expect as more appropriate for the illustration of a text than an oil painting:



Couple's version of Quijote's meeting with the windmills (episode to which I will return with Doré), cannot drop the inclination to use allegorical figures to express abstract concepts, so we see the flying female figure of Madness and the frivolous Cupid figuring Love as always. Coypel was using the visual language of his times; the one with which he could express himself and the one with which he would be understood. And to us, now, it seems ironic that Coypel resorts to fantasy when illustrating a novel that ridicules overwrought fantasy.

Much harder to find in the web are examples of the German Daniel Chodowiecki (1726-1801), and I have found only one in the web and only of Sancho, when he is prevented from eating while he is Governor of his Ínsula, but which I have been unable to paste . I detect however a theatrical approach to his images.

We also have the iconic version by Picasso, but sadly, he did not illustrate the text. Just created an image.



Returning to Doré, and in particular to his large plates, I have been marvelled by several aspects: his framing and fragmentation of spaces; his use of light and dark; his use of texture (owes a great deal to Rembrandt); his command of the various sceneries (whether these are Oriental, Courtly, Rural, or Natural-Romantic). But the most striking aspect is his intelligence and this is best exemplified by my favourite scene, selected as the cover of the book by Dover, showing Quijote and Rocinante being lifted off by one of the wings of the gigantic windmill. The foreshortened Quijote together with a fraction of the mill’s arm give wings and make Rocinante fly and convert him back to a fantastic horse that not even Pegasus could equal.




Having this on the side, while reading Cervantes, has been a lot of fun. The process I followed was to read first and then run to Doré’s illustrations excited with the anticipation of finding which scenes had he chosen to illustrate and see them in their visual splendour. I always embraced Doré’s proposal and I just feel sad that Cervantes himself had not seen them.

Ah, if I could command a Time-Travel machine and sit Miguel de Cervantes to leaf through Doré's version of his masterpiece.....

[Fionnuala]

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:

[E. G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Introduction

--Doré's Illustrations for Don Quixote

Author Biographies

[Ashley Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Zahraa · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

[♡︎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

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!”

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.)

[Mario Cruz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este libro no es para leer el Quijote sino para disfrutar de los prodigiosos grabados del artista francés Paul Gustave Doré.
Estas ilustraciones en algún momento decoraron las paredes del restaurante de emparedados "Sancho Panza" en el centro comercial Perisur de la Ciudad de México.
En ese lugar fue donde descubrí las ilustraciones de Doré.
El libro es una joya deliciosa para cualquier aficionado a Don Quijote o a los grabados.

[Terry Mulcahy · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Wetdryvac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Working largely with the illustrations, a most excellent experience.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good illustrations with explanation.

[morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

good reproductions.

[Nirvana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dore was such a giant, man

[Jdamaskinos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite!!! Gives life to Cervante’s text and is a very nice companion to the first modern Western novel.

[Larissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Jenaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must have!!!!

[Jedkimball]

Amazing images and insightful attention to detail