DORE, do'rti.', PA•L (1833-83), A French illustrator, painter, and sculptor. Ile was born at St ra .Tannary G, 1833, the son of an engineer. Ilis was very preco cious. At the age of ten he drew sketches for lithographs. and in his fifteenth year lac was regularly employed as an illustrator by the Journal pour Vire, at the same time exhibiting series of pen sketches in the Salons. He had but little education in art, and the demand for his ih-signs, was too great to allow him the requisite leisure for technical training. As a caricaturist he was successful, but he soon turned his atten tion to the illustration of books. His Rabelais ///astrr, which appeared in 1S54, established his reputation. and this work was followed by an in credible mmilier of others, equally famous. Ile •a not only popular in France, but in the United States and throughout Europe, a lly in England, where there was a Dori. cult. lie worked with amazing facility and fecundity, ae quiring great sums of money through his art. Ile was made a Chevalier of the Legion of honor in 1861, and ()dicer in 1879. Ile died in Paris, January 23, 1883.
Dor(.-.'s reputation as an artist is due to his illustrations, in which his wonderful imagina tion. his dramatic sentiment, and his astonish ing fecundity had opportunity for full sway. His drawing, however, is often faulty. Ile uses land scape with success, especially in order to obtain the weird and gloomy effects in which lie ex celled. Sometimes. as. for example. in his last great work, Orlando rarioso (Istin , his imagi nation runs riot, and his work becomes exag gerated and bizarre. His chief masterpieces of engraving, besides the Rabelais, mentioned above, are Don Quixote ( I S63) and Dante's Inferno (18(i1). Among the numerous other works which he illustrated were Balzae's Conies Drolatiques (185(3), Attila (1862). the Bible (1S64), and La Fontaine's Fables (1S6(3). Ile illustrated a num
ber of important works of English literature, among which are Milton's Paradise Lost 11s66), Tennyson's Idylls of the King (1867-68), Cole ridge's Ancient Mariner (1S7G), and Poe's Toren (1383).
Dori• aspired to be an historical painter, and, with his accustomed facility, created many works, mostly of colossal proportions. In these his lack of technical training is particularly con spicuous, especially his faulty drawing and his lack of color sense. The English, however, made much of his painting, and there was for a long time a permanent exhibition of his pictures in London. llis first exhibited canvas was the "Battle of the Alma" (1855), and the best of his paintings arc "Franeesca da Rimini" and the "Neophyte" (1868). His large canvases, "Christ Leaving the Prtetorium," and "Christ's Entry into Jerusalem," attracted much attention. Dor6's landscapes and aquarelles are worse than his figure pieces. In them the artist strives after scintillating effects. but shows no real feel ing for nature.
As a sculptor his technical deficiencies are even more evident. His best-known work is the monument to Alexandre Dumas in the I'lace Malesherbes, Paris. But he was more successful in a colossal vase, exhibited in the Exposition Universelle of 1878, and now in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. The vase represents the "Vintage." and is decorated with numerous little figures of geniuses and animals, in which, in a graceful and delightful manner, the artist has expressed his exuberant fantasy.
Consult: Delo•me, Gustav Dore (Paris, 1879) ; Roosevelt, Life and Reminiscences of Gustav Dore (1,0mbm, S55 ) ; Jerrold, Life of Gustarc Dore; ('la retie, Printres et seutpteurs contempo rains (2d series, Paris, ISS4) Hamerton. in Fine Arts Quarterly Review, N'01. iii. (London, 18(i4).