Paul Gustave Doré

Born Jan. 6, 1832, in Strasbourg; died Jan. 23, 1883, in Paris; French graphic artist.

Doré’s fame rests on his picturesque, dynamic, grotesquely expressive illustrations—the drawings for Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel (1854) and Balzac’s Droll Stories (1855-56), full of fantasy and humor, and the romantically effective folio-sized drawings for Dante’s Divine Comedy (1861), Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1862-63), and the Bible (1864-66). From these drawings masterly wood engravings were made. His scenes from the life of the London poor, executed in the 1860’s and 1870’s, are an incisive social commentary. From the early 1860’s he devoted himself to painting, etching, and later sculpture.