He was born at Strasburg, January 6, 1833, and came to Paris while very young, where he received his education. He began his work as an artist in boyhood, furnishing designs at first for cheap illustrated books and papers. When he was about fifteen years of age, some of his pen and ink sketches and paintings were put on exhibition at the Salon. Not long after he had gained a reputation and did not want for abundance of remunerative employment.
Doré was designer, painter, etcher, and sculptor, all. It is said that he made nearly 50,000 different designs during his life; and some one has estimated that all his works of different kinds, placed in line, would reach from Paris to Lyons.
It was as a designer that he was most successful and popular. His illustrations of “The Wandering Jew”—first published in 1856—made him famous the world over. It is the judgment of critics that these illustrations he never excelled. He began at his best, it has been remarked. Some of his first important works were equal to any he ever executed. Among other books which he illustrated, may be mentioned, Rabelais, Montaigne’s “Journal,” Taine’s “Voyage aux Pyrenees,” Dante’s works, Chateaubriand’s “Atala,” “Don Quixote,” “Paradise Lost,” the Bible, Tennyson’s “Idyls of the King,” La Fontaine’s “Fables,” and Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner.” For some time before his death he was engaged in illustrating Shakspere, and it is understood that Harper and Brothers will shortly issue an edition of Poe’s “Raven,” with illustrations of his designing. Among Doré’s many paintings, his “Christ leaving the Prætorium”—which measures thirty feet by twenty—and “Entrance of Christ into Jerusalem”—also a colossal picture—are perhaps the most celebrated. Of the latter it has been said that over it “the critics smiled and Christians wept.” Other of his well-known pictures are “The Triumph of Christianity,” “The Neophyte,” “The Gambling Hall at Baden-Baden,” and “The Rebel Angels Cast Down.”
Doré was the most popular of modern designers. His illustrations, original, weird, grotesque, have gone all over the world. They are found in every library. The people enjoyed his work, and publishers eagerly sought it. He believed in himself, labored hard for wealth and fame, and was very successful. Like many artists, he struggled with poverty at the first, but the time came when all luxury was his to command and his name was a household word in every land. It mattered little to him what the work was upon which he employed his powers, if it only brought returns in money and applause. We see him at one time illustrating the filthy “Contes Drolatiques” and at another the Holy Bible. But a true estimate of this man of splendid gifts and wonderful versatility does not put him in the rank of great artists. Perhaps, if in quantity his work had been less, in quality it would have been better. He succeeded in the beginning, and that may have been unfortunate. He was always very well satisfied with his work, and he failed to improve upon himself. Those who study him in his works see possibilities in him which were never realized. He produced nothing great in art which will live as a monument to his genius. A great painting was what he always intended to execute, but he died with the purpose unfulfilled. The contrast between Millet and Doré has been remarked. The former was devoted to art from motives high and noble, while the other’s devotion was for the sake of what he could make art pay him in money and fame. He gained his ends, but it was in his power to do better, and his career after all was not a success.
Personally Doré was frank and simple, and at times—with his intimate friends—full of geniality. He had no affectation, and was as ready as a child to speak his mind about himself or others. He was sensitive to criticism, but the opinion of others never changed his own good opinion of himself. He was a man of moods. He said of himself that sometimes he was mastered by a demon. He had fits of melancholy and gloom which nothing could banish. But at other times no one was more delightful as a companion. He never married, but lived at his mother’s house in the Rue St. Dominique, St. Germain. Here he had a small studio, but in the Rue Bayard he had another larger one which perhaps was the finest in Paris. Among his many accomplishments was that of music. He sang well, and played on a number of musical instruments. He was not a society man, and spent but little time away from home. His passion was for work, and with this thirty-five years of his life were well filled. Early and late he labored, and with astonishing rapidity. But his last picture is painted, his last design made; and the things unseen and eternal, in picturing which his pencil was sometimes employed, have now become to him things seen and known.
[EDITOR’S NOTE-BOOK.]
John Bright’s sister, Mrs. Margaret B. Lucas, said at a temperance meeting that women are the greatest sufferers by drink, and the hardest to convince as to the necessity of total abstinence.