Featured Artist at the e.Gallery: Paul Gustave Doré

Today’s Featured Artist at the e.Gallery is a 19th Century artist of the Romanticist movement, Paul Gustave Doré [French, 1833-1883] Link: http://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Dore_Gustave

Paul Gustave Doré (1833–83), was a French illustrator, etcher, painter, and sculptor. He was born at Strassburg, Jan. 6, 1833, the son of an engineer. His talent was very precocious. At the age of 12 he drew sketches for lithographs, and in his fifteenth year he was regularly employed as an illustrator by the Journal pour Rire, at the same time exhibiting series of pen sketches in the salons. He had but little education in art, and the demand for his designs was too great to allow him the requisite leisure for technical training. As a caricaturist, he was successful, but he soon turned his attention to the illustration of books. His Rabelais Illustré, which appeared in 1854, established his reputation, and this work was followed by an incredible number of others, equally famous. He was not only popular in France, but in the United States and throughout Europe, especially in England, where there was a Doré cult. He worked with amazing facility and fecundity, acquiring great sums of money through his art. He was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1861 and officer in 1879. He died in Paris, Jan. 23, 1883.