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Gustave Doré (1832–1883) Louis Christophe Gustave
Paul Doré, was a French historical painter and illustrator of books.
He began to exhibit landscape sketches at the Salon from 1848 at the
age of fifteen and showed considerable ability. His best picture, and
that which first brought him into notice as a painter, was Paolo
and Francesca da Rimini, exhibited in 1863. Doré's ambition was
to win fame as an historical painter, but in this he failed. Although
gifted with marvellous fertility of imagination and wonderful facility
of execution, he nevertheless possessed grave defects. Nowhere are his
faults of composition and drawing more manifest than on the enormous
canvases exhibited in the Doré Gallery in London, works to which he
devoted his utmost energy, but which add nothing to his reputation.
It is as a designer of illustrations for books that the wonderful versatility
of his genius becomes most apparent. Such works include illustrations
for Dante's Divine Comedy, the Bible, Paradise Lost,
The Ancient Mariner, and The Idylls of the King. These
works secured for him a greater reputation in England than was accorded
to him in his native country. He afterwards devoted himself to the production
of large pictures on religious subjects. Doré also possessed considerable
ability as a sculptor. He died after completing a large number of works. |
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