Gustave Doré, Masterpieces of Art

by Gustave Doré, Dan Malan (Editor)

An artist who worked across many media, the multi-skilled Gustave Doré remains unequalled as a supremely talented illustrator, whose detailed and imaginative engravings for major works of literature - from Cervantes's Don Quixote to Dante's Divine Comedy, and even the Bible - have hugely influenced the way we see many cultural and literary characters and still inspire today (David Beckham has a tattoo on his chest of Doré's The Agony in the Garden).
This sumptuous new introduction to the artist focuses on these illustrations, first introducing you to his life, work and the rich seam of illustration history that he continued and ignited, from Blake and Fuseli to today's newspaper comics, before presenting a carefully curated thematic selection of his finest and most important engravings. From his vision of Jacob Wrestling with the Angel to Crossing the River Styx, the work of this most prodigious and much borrowed-from artist is represented in glorious full-page reproductions.

Genres: Art

128 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 2019

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

[Leon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not everything, but a great collection of his works organised into categories ranging from religious themes to fairy tales.

[Leo Gomez · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a lot of drawing with a good quality (Talking about image printing). Some details about his career and life. Also the connections between the contemporary media as cinema, and his influences on it, for example.
If you like his work, you will love it.

[Laisrian · Rating 1 out of 5]

Good quality prints, but this publication is seriously undermined by inane biographical details and the continual need to relate Doré to trivia on popular culture (DiD yoU knOw DoRé inSpIred ShReK? No!).